When Fatima Rizwan launched Okara in March 2026, her four-person team needed to get payments up and running fast. The Singapore-based AI marketing platform chose Stripe and completed its entire payment integration in a single session. Within two hours of launch, Okara had exceeded $1 million ARR.

The team handled the implementation themselves by feeding Stripe’s documentation into an LLM and building the integration in a few hours. “We are a small team, we are moving very fast, we don’t want to spend two weeks going through the demo calls and onboarding process,” says Rizwan, Okara founder and CEO. “Stripe understands startup DNA, that you need to move fast, and that’s why we decided to use it.”

With multicurrency support enabled from day one, Okara was able to accept payments in USD, SGD, and other currencies without additional engineering work. That allowed the Singapore-based company to serve its primarily US customer base without friction.

A checkout built for tech-savvy founders

Okara uses Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite as its entire payment experience. Stripe Checkout gave the team a prebuilt, conversion-optimised payment form that they could brand to match Okara’s identity, with the ability to turn on additional payment methods without completing individual integrations. The team also enabled Link, a wallet built by Stripe that autofills customer payment information for a faster, more secure checkout experience.

Since launch, 68% of Okara’s payment volume has flowed through Link, giving customers a faster checkout experience without any optimization work from the team. “We just activated Link,” says Rizwan. “Our audience, entrepreneurs, are already buying subscriptions online and have Link activated.”

Outsourcing the financial stack to stay focused on the product

With a four-person team at launch, Okara relies on Stripe as its payment operations layer. Stripe Billing supports the company’s subscription-based revenue model and gives the team flexibility to adjust pricing as it introduces higher-tier plans. Smart Retries automatically retries failed payments at optimal times to maximize revenue from existing customers, while card account updater reduces involuntary churn by keeping payment information current when cards expire or are replaced. The team proactively enabled Radar, Stripe's fraud protection tool, eliminating the need to build a fraud operations function.

The team doesn’t spend engineering cycles testing payment flows, trusting Stripe’s infrastructure to handle scale. As Okara expands beyond solo founders to serve larger marketing teams, Rizwan plans to introduce higher-tier plans that unlock additional AI agents on the platform. She is also working with Stripe to optimize checkout conversion as the company enters new markets.