Ford Motor Company has signed a five-year deal with Stripe, an online payment processor, to expand the automaker’s e-commerce capabilities. Stripe facilitates transactions for vehicle orders and reservations, handles financing options for Ford commercial customers, and routes customer payments from the automaker’s website to the right local Ford or Lincoln dealership.
Ford plans to begin rolling out Stripe technology in the second half of 2022, starting with North America but aiming to roll it out in Europe as well. according to the company. Last year, Stripe raised $600 million Round valued at $95 billion, funds the company says it would use to expand in Europe.
The collaboration with Stripe is part of Ford’s larger restructuring plan Ford+, an electrification and growth strategy in which the company fits plans to invest $30 billion by 2025. The strategic decision is also consistent with large parts the auto industry’s tendency to invest in technologies that offer the greatest likelihood of generating returns, particularly in the short term as the pandemic impacted automakers’ ability to meet customer demands. And with Ford and Lincoln preparing to add a range of subscription services, like most recently, Amazon’s FireTV, it makes sense for the automaker to establish a robust digital payment platform.
“As part of the Ford+ plan for growth and value creation, we are making strategic decisions about where to onboard vendors with solid expertise and where to build the differentiated, always-on experiences our customers will value,” said Marion Harris, CEO of Fords Financial services arm, Ford Motor Credit Company, in a statement. “Stripe has developed a strong user experience expertise that will help provide our customers with simple, intuitive and secure payment processes.”
Stripe’s platform, which has other big-name clients like Deliveroo, Shopify, and Salesforce, will be an important part of Ford’s product and service tech stack, the company said. The payment processor aims to help create more efficiencies across a range of e-commerce payments, which will also include billing services.
So far, investors are reacting positively to the Ford+ plan. The automaker was the top performing auto stock in 2021, about Tesla, General Motors and even the new and overrated Rivian. Last week, Ford’s market cap surpassed $100 billion for the first time.
