Challenge

Ronald Ding and Ed Goode co-founded Shadeform, a GPU cloud marketplace that connects developers with compute resources from dozens of providers, to help meet the growing demand for GPUs that can power next-generation AI use cases. The San Francisco-based company makes it simple for developers to filter for GPU resources by specs, hardware, pricing, and availability, allowing users to quickly compare options and spin up compute in seconds.

Shadeform’s founders knew they would need a way to streamline billing and payments for users transacting across multiple providers. As a small startup, Shadeform needed a solution that was quick to implement and wouldn’t divert engineering resources away from building the core solution.

“We realized very early on that we needed to centralize billing to be a true marketplace,” Ding said. “There was simply no world where someone would want to use us and then go to a bunch of different providers to manage billing in multiple places.”

As it scaled, Shadeform wanted to provide more flexibility in the way users could pay. Because ACH only works with US bank accounts, ACH wasn’t a viable option for high-volume users in Europe and Asia. Credit cards often meant limited transaction sizes, high processing fees, and potential declines. Customers began asking for the ability to pay using cryptocurrency, but Shadeform was hesitant due to concerns about the complexity of accepting and managing crypto in a wallet or converting crypto into fiat to pay providers.

Solution

A few weeks after Shadeform launched its GPU cloud marketplace, the company integrated Stripe Payments so customers could transact directly with Shadeform instead of paying each GPU cloud provider separately.

Shadeform used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite to quickly create a fast, flexible, and secure checkout experience using a mix of Checkout for self-service customers and a combination of Hosted Invoice Page and Payment Links for its larger customers. This allowed the company to accept payments without having to build its own checkout experience or manage customer payment data. By enabling Adaptive Pricing, Shadeform can collect all payments in USD while allowing customers to see prices and pay in their local currency. Shadeform also adopted Link, a wallet built by Stripe, that autofills customers’ payment information to create a fast, easy, secure checkout experience.

Shadeform uses Stripe to offer a flexible payment experience designed to meet the needs of different types of users. Self-serve users typically fund a prepaid wallet on Shadeform through Stripe, which Shadeform then draws down based on usage. This allows customers to quickly switch between GPU providers on Shadeform without having to set up and fund new accounts with each partner.

While its early users included hobbyists and startups that could easily top up credits, Shadeform quickly began attracting the attention of enterprises that wanted to scale production volumes without constantly topping up credits. To serve larger organizations with more predictable spend that prefer to be invoiced monthly, as well as customers who are pre-purchasing months of GPU access, Shadeform added Stripe Invoicing to generate and manage invoices that are sent automatically at the end of each billing cycle. This helped the company remove a key friction point that helped unlock greater GPU spend from enterprise clients.

To meet customer demand for a crypto payment method, in 2025 Shadeform began accepting payment in USDC, a stablecoin designed to maintain a 1:1 value with USD. The company was able to immediately begin accepting USDC by enabling it as a payment option in Payments. Stripe converts the currency automatically and deposits funds in USD directly into Shadeform’s bank account, eliminating the need to manage wallets, exchanges, and transfers. Stablecoin transactions are less expensive to process than international credit card payments, saving the company on fees. And because stablecoin transactions are final, they don’t carry the risk of disputes or chargebacks.

Shadeform uses Stripe Radar to detect and protect against fraudulent transactions. Radar generates a risk score for every transaction, and any transaction that exceeds the company’s risk threshold is automatically blocked, protecting Shadeform and its GPU cloud partners from bad actors using stolen credit cards to access compute.

In addition, Shadeform discovered early on that it needed a reliable way to prevent people from using stolen credit cards to purchase GPUs.

Results

Shadeform implements Stripe in two days

Shadeform implemented Payments shortly after launch, using just one engineer and two days of development time. As a result, the company maintained its momentum from launch while removing a source of friction for its users.

“Stripe had some of the best APIs we could find, and the best documentation,” Ding said. “Getting the platform fully running with end-to-end self-serve payments in two days wasn’t something we could have done with any other payments processing platform.”

Accepting stablecoins boosts revenue by 10%

Shadeform began accepting USDC by simply switching on the stablecoin and crypto payment method in Payments, saving the company the weeks it would have taken to set up its own crypto wallet and integrate it into payment processing workflows.

Since enabling USDC payments, Shadeform became a viable option for high-volume customers in Europe and Asia who couldn’t use ACH or struggled with international card limitations, leading to a 10% revenue increase after implementation. Stablecoin payments now account for almost 20% of Shadeform’s payment volume.

“Accepting crypto allows our pre-paid customers to add more funds to their wallet in a single transaction, which reduces complexities for them,” Ding said. “And with Stripe managing all the processing and conversion to fiat, it minimizes complexity for us too.”

Shadeform reduces processing fees by 66% for transactions using stablecoins

Shadeform pays 1.5% to accept stablecoins for transactions, compared to 4.5% for international credit cards. With most of its stablecoin payments coming from customers overseas, Shadeform saves about 66% when customers pay using stablecoin.

“As a high-volume, low-margin marketplace, saving that much on processing fees matters a lot to our bottom line,” Ding said.

Link processes 70% of transactions

Seventy percent of Shadeform’s transactions are now processed using Link, allowing customers to complete purchases faster without needing to re-enter payment details.

Shadeform uses Radar to eliminate fraud

While fraud was an issue when the company launched, Shadeform has eliminated virtually all fraud since implementing Radar, with no reported incidents in the past nine months.

“We are risk-averse when it comes to running our business,” Ding said. “Stripe Radar allowed us to almost completely eliminate fraud in the last two years. We haven’t had a fraud incident in a really long time.”