Stripe Launches Terminal for In-Person Payments via API

On September 26, 2018, Stripe launched Stripe Terminal in the United States, a product enabling online retailers to accept in-person card payments through API integration. The launch extended Stripe's platform capabilities from purely online payments into the physical point-of-sale environment. Stripe Terminal allowed businesses already using Stripe's online payment APIs to seamlessly integrate in-store transactions into the same infrastructure, embodying an embedded finance approach to unified commerce.

The move placed Stripe in direct competition with Square's hardware-based POS ecosystem and PayPal, which had just completed its acquisition of European POS provider iZettle. Stripe had recently raised $245 million in funding at a $20 billion valuation, providing capital to fuel this competitive expansion. The product was aimed at platform businesses and marketplaces that needed to bridge online and offline payment acceptance through a single API-driven solution.