Challenge

When MiniMax released its AI text-to-video generation model in August 2024 as a new product built on its LLM, the team quickly discovered that it had a hit on its hands. The model went viral on Reddit and X, with thousands of creators eager to test it before MiniMax had even named the model – let alone determined how the company would monetise it. As a result, MiniMax had to limit users to three free attempts before throttling use to limit its costs.

Caught off guard, a team of 10 engineers at the company scrambled to build a home-grown subscription system. They spent a month developing the basic subscription logic, but they continually encountered payment-related issues that the company had never faced before.

Even as MiniMax expanded its global audience for its innovative AI products, the company faced a separate challenge with its manual invoicing process. Its home-grown billing system efficiently tracked API token usage for a vast mix of small business and enterprise customers, but it lacked an automated invoicing mechanism. As a result, two finance team members spent roughly five hours each week generating, sending and troubleshooting invoices – an inefficient process that negatively impacted cash flow.

With revenue coming in from around the globe, MiniMax also needed to manage its tax compliance across multiple jurisdictions – without overwhelming its finance team with manual tracking and country-specific rules.

Solution

MiniMax turned to Stripe in 2024 to implement a scalable, global payments infrastructure without delay. MiniMax implemented Stripe Payments to process first-time and recurring payments for its subscribers. Stripe APIs made it easy to configure Payments to work with the company's existing billing logic, rather than having to rebuild it from scratch. Stripe Payments also resolved edge cases that its engineers had struggled with, such as adjusting for global time zones so users in different regions wouldn't see their subscriptions expire early (due to a fixed time zone cut-off instead of the user's local time zone).

With Payments, MiniMax immediately began collecting revenue from users in more than 100 countries using a single payments infrastructure. MiniMax then used Stripe's Optimized Checkout Suite to quickly rebuild and enhance its checkout experience. The team used Stripe Checkout, a pre-built payment form that makes it easy to launch a secure payment experience and to turn on payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay from the Stripe Dashboard. The team also used Adaptive Pricing to automatically display prices in local currency, increasing conversion.

In every checkout session, MiniMax was able to leverage the AI models built into the Optimized Checkout Suite to dynamically display payment methods based on many signals without additional engineering effort. MiniMax simplified the checkout process further by adding Link, a wallet built by Stripe that lets users save their payment information once for faster checkout everywhere Link is available globally.

MiniMax also began using Stripe Invoicing to automate invoice generation and management. The team replaced error-prone Word documents with Stripe's automated invoicing tools that enable localised formats without requiring the finance team to manually make changes before sending.

To manage its tax compliance requirements, MiniMax also added Stripe Tax to automate end-to-end tax management, including calculation, collection, reporting, registration and filing for transactions around the globe.

Results

MiniMax monetised its new app within two weeks

After a short assessment phase, MiniMax implemented Payments in two weeks. The implementation required only two engineers, freeing the rest of the team to focus on innovation.

"Compared to our previous payment solution, Stripe required fewer development resources thanks to its well-documented guides and clear APIs, making it easier to implement and maintain. Our engineers were able to refocus on building features that drive revenue and retention, like Hollywood-style camera movements and transitions. Our engineers all wished we had Stripe two months earlier," said Linda Sheng, GM Global Enterprise Business at MiniMax.

MiniMax now processes payments from global active users

By supporting card and wallet payments for subscribers in more than 100 countries, MiniMax created a subscription model that now processes payments from global active customers each month. With Adaptive Pricing, MiniMax also now displays localised pricing for 89% of all transactions.

"Stripe helped us increase our payment volume and global expansion speed," said Sheng.

40% of pay-in volume is now processed through Link

MiniMax used Link to give users a faster checkout experience via saved payment details, reducing friction at checkout. Link adoption has taken off across MiniMax's customer base, with 40% of all customers now paying with Link.

Automated invoicing helped save five finance hours per week

MiniMax automated its invoicing process using Stripe, saving the finance team five hours per week. In addition to improving cash flow and reducing human errors, this freed the finance team to focus on strategic activities – such as forecasting – that can drive more value for the business.

"With Stripe, our invoicing process has become significantly more automated, resulting in a noticeable reduction in payment delays and a substantial decrease in invoice errors," said Sheng.

Stripe Tax helped improve compliance across five key markets

MiniMax used Tax to maintain tax compliance across five of its largest markets, further saving time for its finance team while improving confidence.

"As a fast-growing startup, we are just catching up on a lot of these details and different countries have very different tax codes. With the help of Stripe's tax tools, we save approximately 10 hours per month on tax compliance tasks," said Sheng.