In media, the main driver for revenue is both subscriptions and advertising. These two means fund the growth of media on the web and are platform specific. That means, when someone subscribes or advertises to something, they do so on the platform rather than the individual. The platform holds the reputation, and the individual leverages the platfor... See more
That is the key decision that Shopify, Substack, Teachable, Superpeer, MyVillage, Wonderschool, WeeCare, Squire, Dumpling, SmartHop, and every other BiaB platform will ultimately face.
Shopify is a really smart company. It wouldn’t tie its own hands for no good reason. Instead, it made a deliberate, strategic choice to focus on the things that it does best, and to plug in Stripe for all of the things that it does best. That’s what third-party APIs enable their customers to do.
Large customers and partners are an issue for Stripe right now because they have more negotiating power. By one estimate, even before the pandemic, Stripe was generating $350 million in revenue from Shopify alone. That gives Shopify a lot of power over Stripe. If Shopify leaves, that’s a material hit to Stripe’s revenue.