Stripe's managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Karl Durrance, gave a handful of journalists a brief tour of the Sydney CBD office building, where it has about 100 employees and is looking to hire more.
Those software engineers would be working on Stripe's core systems, Mr Durrance said, adding that the Kent Street office had been deemed a global engineering hub for the $227 billion company.
"I think this is a really big moment in time," he said.
"This is no longer a remote relationship office, this is now a core engineering office for Stripe, which I think is reflective of the talent pool availability here, which has been seen as very strong, and also Stripe's investment in the local economy, which we're excited about," he said.
Based in San Francisco and Dublin, Stripe has about 8,500 employees globally.Â
It had another office in Melbourne and an "emerging office" in Auckland, Mr Durrance said.
In 2025 the financial infrastructure company processed $2.7 trillion in transactions for five million businesses, including all of the top AI companies and many of the largest blue chips.
In Australia, Stripe has more than a million users, from "solopreneurs" who use Stripe to process payments for their side hustle to very large ASX-listed companies such as Origin Energy, as well as streaming service Stan and AI start-ups Heidi and Lorikeet.
Mr Durrance and Stripe executive Daniel Miller told reporters that Stripe was working with OpenAI to develop standards for "agentic commerce", so shopping could one day be handled by AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
Right now that involves a protocol for merchants and chatbots to share information, as well as secure payment that lets agents initiate payments without exposing credentials.
Their vision is that eventually a parent might be able to tell their chatbot to get their back-to-school shopping done, give it a budget, and trust that the agent would weigh the choices and make the purchases on their behalf.
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