Challenge

Emergent was founded by two software engineers who asked a simple question: what if software could build itself? Today, the San Francisco-based vibe-coding platform is one of the fastest-growing startups in the world, scaling to $100 million in annual revenue run rate within eight months of launching.

“Most of the world’s economic gains over the past 30 years have been software driven. We imagine a world where everyone has access to the best software developer at their fingertips,” said Mukund Jha, cofounder and CEO of Emergent.

Early results from its beta program made it clear that Emergent had a hit no-code product on its hands. As it prepared to launch in mid-2025, the company knew it would need to accept payments for both subscriptions and usage-based credit top-ups that customers could purchase as needed to power their applications. To reduce checkout friction and attract customers, Emergent wanted to accept a wide variety of payment methods, such as local payment methods for key markets, and stablecoins for customers who don’t have access to other payment methods or prefer to pay in crypto.

Emergent’s team suspected they would need to scale quickly. In preparation, the company needed to reduce the risk of payment fraud and manage tax compliance requirements without distracting its engineering team from focusing on innovation.

Solution

Emergent launched its platform with Stripe Payments so it could accept payments from customers in 190 countries immediately.

“In other companies I’ve built, I’ve seen how payment infrastructure can either hold you back or have a massive positive impact on your business,” said Jha. “Having a great payment infrastructure really helps you focus on building your product, so Stripe was the obvious choice for us.”

Stripe’s developer-friendly APIs and prebuilt checkout surfaces made it possible for Emergent to quickly begin accepting payments without diverting its limited engineering resources. Emergent used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite to create a flexible checkout experience that allowed its team to experiment with pricing and payment methods without complex coding. The company deployed Stripe Checkout to embed a prebuilt payment form in its site so customers could quickly pay and start building their applications.

To serve its global customer base, Emergent uses Stripe to accept a wide variety of payment methods, including credit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, UPI, Pix, Kakao Pay, Naver Pay, Cash App Pay, and stablecoins. The platform also activated Stripe’s digital wallet, Link, to let customers check out faster using their saved payment details. By using the Optimized Checkout Suite, Emergent could turn on all these payment methods with a single click through the Stripe Dashboard. The Optimized Checkout Suite dynamically displays the most relevant payment methods to customers based on their location, device, and order size to maximize conversion rates.

Emergent adopted Stripe Billing to handle recurring charges for its standard monthly subscriptions, and Stripe Invoicing to quickly issue one-off invoices for enterprise customers, allowing its team to experiment with pricing without additional engineering work. Usage-based credit top-ups are calculated through Emergent’s in-house system, with Stripe processing those transactions as they occur.

The company integrated Radar for Fraud Teams to reduce its risk of payment fraud as it scaled across the globe. The team now uses Stripe Radar’s AI-powered risk engine, trained on data from millions of global transactions, to identify and block suspicious activity—and create custom rules to target fraud patterns specific to its business.

Results

Emergent implemented Stripe in two days with one engineer

By taking advantage of Optimized Checkout Suite’s time-saving options, such as the prebuilt checkout surface and one-click payment method activation, Emergent integrated Stripe in just two days. That rapid integration allowed the company to begin collecting payments at launch. While a single developer handled the initial setup, Emergent partnered with Stripe to ensure its infrastructure was built to support the platform’s rapid expansion.

“When we launched, we were only a six-person team. We had a new engineer who was a recent grad and had never done payments before in his life. We told him, ‘We are launching in two days, go and implement Stripe,’” said Jha. “He went through the documentation and had everything working by the time we were ready to go live.”

Stablecoin payment volume has nearly doubled since activation

With the expansion into stablecoin payments, Emergent can now attract a broader customer base in more countries, especially in markets where customers lack access to other payment methods. Stablecoin transactions have nearly doubled in recent months compared to the initial launch phase in late 2025.

Link now processes 42% of Emergent’s transactions

After launch, Emergent activated Link to accelerate the checkout process. Today, 42% of transactions come through Link, driven by repeat customers topping up usage-based credits.
“Adding Link got us a massive bump in adoption by making checkout seamless from a customer perspective,” said Jha.

Stripe Billing now drives 40% of payment volume

Emergent uses Billing to manage its subscription plans, which account for 40% of the company’s payment volume. With Billing, the company can quickly experiment with pricing and discounts while supporting charges for its in-house credit system.

“In the beginning, we experimented a lot with pricing. It was pretty seamless—a member of our business team could do it themselves through the Stripe Dashboard without needing any engineering work from our side,” said Jha.

Radar for Fraud Teams now reduces fraud by more than 80%

Working with Radar for Fraud Teams alongside its own internal measures, Emergent reduced its fraud rate by more than 80%. Emergent uses Radar’s risk scoring to automatically block high-risk transactions and its card fingerprinting to prevent promo abuse—where customers create multiple accounts to redeem the same discount on the same card. “Given the nature of our global business, fraud is a big problem. Working with Stripe to fine-tune our use of Radar and find the right block threshold for our business really helped us improve our payment success rate,” said Jha.