Challenge

As a former restaurant owner, Jamal Ahmed had experienced the common practices that slowed restaurants down and limited their moneymaking potential. In particular, he saw a need to modernize order management, which often relied on pen-on-paper scribbles and staff running between the front of house and the kitchen. To help restaurant owners streamline that process, he created Ubsidi in 2018 as an electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) platform that used several Stripe products as the backbone of its financial infrastructure: Stripe Payments for payment processing, Stripe Terminal hardware to support in-person payments, and Stripe Connect to route funds between customers and restaurants.

As Ubsidi grew, so did its customers’ needs for more money management tools. Some began asking Ubsidi for a way to spend on credit, giving them more flexibility to deal with unpredictable cash flows. Another common request was access to a dedicated source of funds that restaurants could use for payroll, vendor payments, and other expenses. Franchise-based businesses with many locations, in particular, wanted a centralized finance hub to provide greater visibility across their operations and eliminate the need for multiple bank accounts.

To help meet its customers’ broader financial needs, Ubsidi began evaluating providers of spend management tools that could be embedded easily and quickly into its platform. “Our ultimate goal is that any restaurant should be able to use our system to run all aspects of their business, without relying on any other software vendors,” said Jamal Ahmed, Ubsidi’s founder and CEO.

Solution

Given its track record of launching and growing its business on Stripe, Ubsidi chose to deepen the relationship by adopting embedded finance tools designed to work with its existing Stripe infrastructure.

In September 2024, Ubsidi adopted Stripe Issuing, which allows businesses to create an expense management program powered by Stripe’s fully compliant and easy-to-configure financial infrastructure. With Issuing, Ubsidi offered its customers the option for prepaid physical and virtual cards funded from their Ubsidi accounts, which restaurant owners and managers could use for day-to-day expenses such as equipment purchases, food deliveries, and vehicle refueling. Ubsidi developed a dashboard restaurants could use to generate the spend cards and track expenses.

More recently, in September 2025, Ubsidi added Stripe Financial Accounts for platforms, allowing its customers to open cash management accounts on the Ubsidi platform that are funded from their Stripe balance or from an external bank account. Ubsidi gave restaurants the option to have funds routed from sales directly into their financial account, then make payments from that account for bills, supplies, and more. Franchise businesses with multiple locations can now funnel sales from all locations into one financial account, from which they can pay suppliers and disburse staff wages. The system also offers centralized reporting: Ubsidi integrates its customers’ Financial Accounts with its own bookkeeping tool that businesses can use to track and approve invoices and payouts.

Results

40% of Ubsidi customers have created cards for spend management

In the two years since Ubsidi adopted Issuing, awareness has steadily grown within its customer base. To date, about 40% of restaurants on Ubsidi’s platform have created cards and issued them to managers and employees for spending on day-to-day expenses. By moving away from the slow, rigid nature of traditional bank-controlled card programs, Issuing has provided Ubsidi’s customers with instant, programmable control over card creation, spending, and financial workflows. Ubsidi expects that figure to reach up to 80% in 2026 as it ramps up outreach.

“We’re taking customer feedback and looking at metrics to identify how we can increase usage,” said Ahmed. “For example, finding out how they are paying for expenses and services, and educating them on all the ways they can use the cards.”

Offering consolidating Financial Accounts enhanced Ubsidi’s appeal to franchises

Ubsidi has strengthened its value proposition to restaurant groups by giving them a single, embedded financial hub to simplify their payment flows.

“We’ve combined the whole reporting and financial picture into one portal, so the head office can see all the amounts and approve payments without logging into multiple systems,” said Ahmed. “Everything just flows automatically.”

Fast Financial Accounts implementation saved development time

Stripe’s unified infrastructure, clear documentation, and real-time developer support helped Ubsidi integrate Financial Accounts much faster than anticipated, reducing deployment costs and freeing up resources to focus on product development.

“I expected it to take three months, but we did it in one,” said Ahmed. “Any issues that came up were resolved on the same day or the next day.”

95% of trial candidates added Financial Accounts in the first month

Ubsidi is rolling out Financial Accounts organically, contacting longtime customers and a few newer ones to test the new feature and explore use cases. In the first month, 95% of the customers Ubsidi approached agreed to add Financial Accounts.

“As we go into month two and three and more restaurants see the efficiencies they can gain from it, I think we will see a lot more funds flowing into these accounts,” said Ahmed.

Onboarding customers to Connect now makes it easy to add access to financial tools

Once Ubsidi has onboarded a business to its platform, the business is set up for a full Stripe integration, including the options of creating cards and starting a financial account. Through its Connect integration, Ubsidi collects verification documents through its own app, and Stripe handles compliance and regulatory requirements in the background, including Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) rules.

“The whole sign-up—KYC, KYB—we’re only doing once, with no need for multiple authentications,” said Ahmed. “It’s quite helpful to have Stripe as a single provider, so the sign-up process is fast and easy, saving us time and building customer loyalty.”

Ubsidi plans to expand its business model with Issuing

The addition of embedded finance tools is creating opportunities for Ubsidi outside its traditional restaurant industry customer base. The next market the company is targeting is schools and universities, with preloaded cards distributed for foreign travel as the main focus.

“We’re hoping to diversify the business case for Issuing, because it’s a fantastic tool,” said Ahmed.