Challenge

Generative AI was in its infancy when Runway launched in 2018. At the time, the company had a lot of work to do developing and training its AI models, while also identifying strategies to monetize those products. Runway’s leaders envisioned using a subscription model for their AI tools, but needed to keep their team focused on other technology and business priorities—not on creating a billing and payments system.

As a result, Runway was looking for a billing solution that made it easy to launch with an initial set of subscription tiers for users. However, Runway’s leaders knew that its billing and payment needs were likely to evolve over time and wanted to find a solution that was flexible and adaptable to support more sophisticated features in the future.

With a global user base, Runway also needed a payments and billing solution that would make it easy for customers to use their preferred local payment methods. At the same time, Runway wanted that solution to help the company comply with tax regulations in a variety of international markets without overburdening its accounting and finance teams.

Solution

In 2018, Runway launched with Stripe solutions to handle recurring billing, online payments, and global tax management.

Runway implemented Stripe Billing for subscription management. Ease of integration was a key driver of Runway’s decision to integrate Billing. Stripe’s well-documented integration process enabled Runway to set up its pricing and subscription models and register new users in just a few minutes. “The core implementation was focused on creating customers, setting up a simple usage-based model for GPU credits, and handling the basic payment flow,” said Matt Basta, staff platform engineer at Runway. Since then, Billing also has offered the flexibility Runway needed as its business has grown. For instance, Billing has enabled the company to easily offer new subscription tiers, including an unlimited usage option that provides users Runway’s full menu of services.

Runway also used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, which includes a set of prebuilt payment surfaces designed to improve checkout flow, access to many payment methods—including digital wallets, such as Apple Pay and Cash App Pay, and Link, Stripe’s accelerated checkout solution that autofills customer payment details for a fast, easy checkout experience. Runway chose to implement Stripe Checkout, a prebuilt payment form that can be embedded directly into its site and enables developers to turn on new payment methods without any code. Checkout facilitated Runway’s global expansion, with support for more than 30 languages and more than 135 currencies. And Adaptive Pricing allowed customers to pay in their local currency, with currency conversion handled automatically across 150+ countries.

With Stripe Tax, Runway was able to use a single integration to automatically calculate, collect, and report tax on transactions from users around the world. Runway also integrated Stripe Revenue Recognition to make accrual accounting and revenue compliance more efficient. “Stripe’s reporting tools aid our monthly accounting closes, streamlining these activities and saving our finance and accounting teams valuable time,” said Basta.

While Runway’s initial Stripe implementation was fairly basic, the company has relied on a growing universe of Stripe products to support its continued evolution. “As our billing and payment needs grew more sophisticated over time, we’ve added more complex features,” said Basta.

Results

Minutes to integrate Billing

Runway’s integration of Billing took only a few minutes and allowed the company to begin adding subscribers almost immediately. “Our initial implementation of Stripe Billing for Runway was remarkably straightforward,” said Basta. “Stripe’s well-documented APIs and SDKs made it possible to get up and running with minimal complexity.”

A no-code solution for adding payment methods

Runway used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite to quickly turn on eight new payment methods, including digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Cash App Pay, and Link. Adding these new payment methods required no coding, freeing up Runway’s developers to focus on the company’s core offerings.

Time saved for finance and accounting team

Automating the subscription management process through Billing and implementing Tax to support global tax collection and reporting have resulted in considerable time savings for Runway’s finance and accounting teams. What’s more, Stripe reporting and data also provide Runway with important insights into monthly recurring revenues and subscriber growth and retention.