Ford Motor Co. and financial services startup Stripe Inc. on Monday announced a five-year agreement to overhaul the automaker's online payment process.
Under the agreement, Stripe — which is co-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland and is one of the most valuable startups in the U.S. — would serve as the "premier" payment service provider for Ford and its dealers in North America and Europe. Ford cast the move as an attempt to improve the digital and e-commerce experience for its customers.
"We have been working with Ford to reimagine our e-commerce payment infrastructure," Marion Harris, CEO of Ford Motor Credit Co., the automaker's financial services arm, said in a statement. "Stripe's platform will help us deliver simpler, outstanding payment experiences in any channel customers choose and scale improvements faster."
The agreement will see Stripe and Ford building out the automaker's online payments infrastructure, using tools such as Stripe Connect, which "lets businesses create a platform to facilitate purchases and payments between third-party buyers and sellers," according to a news release. In Ford's case, it plans to use the tool to facilitate payments between customers and dealers.
"We're thrilled to be the payments engine under the hood powering the next stage of Ford's digital transformation," Mike Clayville, chief revenue officer at Stripe, said in a statement. "During the pandemic, people got comfortable paying online for groceries, health care, even home haircut advice from barbers. Now, they expect to be able to buy anything and everything online. Ford is making e-commerce possible, too, and scaling that strategy with Stripe's help."
Ford also said that as it develops e-commerce products and services, Stripe's platform "will be a key part of the tech stack."
The automaker expects to roll out Stripe's technology in the second half of this year, starting in North America.
