How the fastest-growing enterprises on Stripe scale globally

We analyzed more than 100 of the fastest-growing enterprises on Stripe and found that they processed their first cross-border transaction on Stripe 24x faster than the enterprise baseline. Despite slower global economic growth and greater geopolitical fragmentation, these enterprises continue to look beyond their home markets—and are investing in tools and workflows that make expansion faster and more repeatable.

To identify the fastest-growing enterprises on Stripe, we used a composite score that measures month-over-month payment volume growth, year-over-year performance, and recent momentum since 2025. We compared this cohort—which spans more than 10 industries across financial services, manufacturing, retail, technology, and others—against a broader set of more than 1,000 enterprises of a similar scale. We define an enterprise as an organization that has been active on Stripe for at least six months and that meets our internal benchmarks, including employee size and revenue.

Here’s what we learned about where enterprises find international demand, how they adapt payments to local preferences, and how they manage the accompanying fraud risk of expanding into new markets.

The fastest-growing enterprises have an outsized presence in emerging markets

Mature economies remain important sources of customer spending, but more of the world’s economic growth is expected to come from emerging economies. These markets are projected to grow by around 4% in 2026, compared to 1.5% for mature economies. And by 2035, emerging markets are expected to account for 65% of global economic growth.

Surprisingly, the fastest-growing companies on Stripe already see outsized spend in emerging global markets. Compared with the enterprise baseline, they achieved 1.6x the share of cross-border payment volume in Brazil, India, and Argentina.

They also reach customers across a wider range of markets. During its first year on Stripe, the median fastest-growing enterprise processed payments from customers in 25 countries—more than six times as many as the enterprise baseline.

This suggests that a geographically diverse approach to expansion can help increase growth. Rather than following the traditional approach of sequential country-by-country expansion or a gradual test-and-learn approach, the fast-growing cohort expands to many mature and emerging markets in parallel.

The fastest-growing enterprises add more ways to pay with less work

Serving customers across so many countries means accommodating a wide range of payment preferences. A checkout that offers only one payment method—or omits the methods customers use locally—can reduce conversion by up to 15%.

The fastest-growing enterprises are investing in a more localized payment experience. The median enterprise from the cohort offers 2x more local payment methods than the enterprise baseline.

We also saw a pattern in how these enterprises manage their wider range of payment options. Adding a new payment method traditionally requires businesses to integrate, configure, and test it, then maintain it over time. Enterprises in the cohort are shortening that process, making it easier to add payment options as customer preferences evolve.

For example, Facile.it—a price comparison service in Italy and a member of the fast-growing cohort—uses Stripe Checkout to add new payment methods in 80% less time than its legacy system required.

Anthropic, a member of the cohort, also used Stripe Checkout to improve its checkout flow and offer a wider range of payment methods. It allowed Anthropic to easily offer payment options, such as credit cards, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Cash App Pay, and local payment methods that would appeal to the company’s increasingly international user base.

These examples show how the right infrastructure can help enterprises support rapid international growth without rebuilding their checkout for every new payment method or market.

The fastest-growing enterprises take a more targeted approach to fraud rules

Broader international reach can expose businesses to a wider variety of fraud patterns, which often differ by region and payment method. That risk exposure showed up in our analysis. In the first half of 2026, the fastest-growing enterprises saw an attempted fraud rate nearly 1.8x higher than the enterprise baseline.

To help combat this fraud, more than half have implemented at least one custom fraud rule within Stripe Radar, our AI-powered fraud prevention product. This makes them more likely than the enterprise baseline to customize their fraud controls.

However, if we only analyze enterprises that use custom rules, the fastest-growing cohort maintains fewer rules per business than the baseline. This suggests a more deliberate approach to fraud management, with fast-growing enterprises relying on Radar’s default fraud models and adding targeted custom rules only where needed—rather than building extensive customized rule sets.

How Stripe can help

Enterprises use Stripe to expand into new markets and operate with less complexity. Stripe’s global selling solution brings together localized checkout, payments performance, money movement, tax compliance, and fraud prevention into one platform, so you can adapt to local customer preferences and regional risks for every new market.

Reach customers in more markets

• Quickly launch a localized, optimized checkout experience across web and mobile with Stripe Checkout, including built-in support for 195+ markets, 135+ currencies, and 34 languages.
• Automatically localize prices in 150+ markets, increasing cross-border revenue by an average of 17.8% with Adaptive Pricing.
• Expand your customer base by offering relevant global and local payment methods, with built-in support for one-time payments, stablecoins, subscriptions, AI-powered fraud detection, localized currency presentment, and cross-border payments—all through a single integration.
• Launch in new markets faster without setting up local entities using Stripe Managed Payments, Stripe’s merchant of record solution that simplifies global selling.

Manage risk as you expand globally

• Intelligently apply authentication to riskier transactions and as required by local regulations with adaptive 3DS, reducing fraud without adding unnecessary friction for legitimate customers.
• Reduce fraud across supported payment volume globally, including bank debits, stablecoin payments, digital wallets, real-time payments, and cash vouchers, with Radar.

Learn more about how Stripe can help you go global faster, or contact us.