Payments fintech Stripe announced three major upgrades to their payments platform to help users increase revenue, direct connectivity to major card networks and making Stripe Issuing available to all U.S. businesses; Stripe’s platform connects directly to Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB, and China Union Pay across global markets; the company also handles more than 250 million API requests a day, while maintaining 99.999 percent uptime; “Stripe Issuing is a big step forward,” said Alex Rampell, GP at Andreessen Horowitz, to TearSheet. “Not just for the millions of businesses running on Stripe, but for credit cards as a fundamental technology. Businesses can now use an API to create and issue cards exactly when and where they need them, and they can do it in a few clicks, not a few months. As investors, we’re excited by all the potential new companies and business models that will emerge as a result.”; the changes could result in more than $2.5bn in additional revenue for Stripe customers this year. TearSheet
