Challenge

As the son of a professional guitarist, Adam Singolda understands how difficult it is for independent artists and entrepreneurs to promote their products and services, and make a living doing what they love. He also knows a key driver behind the multibillion-dollar, open-web advertising industry is the need companies have to improve website traffic and revenue by dynamically displaying targeted information about third-party products.

In 2007, Singolda decided to build an AI-driven advertising platform called Taboola to meet the needs of sellers of any size as well as companies looking to offer personalized native ads on their websites. After several years of initial development and fundraising cycles, Singolda was ready to launch a globally scalable version of Taboola. Because payment processing wasn’t his core business, Singolda sought a third party that would enable anyone with a credit card to market their products with his self-service platform. As Taboola quickly outperformed other advertising platforms, Singolda needed to meet increasing demand and emerging challenges by supporting more global currencies and payment options, reducing risks from fraud, accelerating development, and streamlining financial processes with automation.

Solution

Taboola chose Stripe to provide self-service payment processing. Stripe could support Singolda’s vision and offer a flexible API to facilitate rapid, ongoing business innovation.

“In our experience at Taboola, we view Stripe as a strategic partner in our global growth,” said Ami Rotter, product manager at Taboola. “Its strong platform has empowered us to seamlessly enter new markets and integrate new features as our business scales.”

In 2016, Taboola integrated its platform with Stripe Connect and set up Stripe Payments for managing credit card payments in the US. As demand grew, Taboola developers used Payments to support credit card purchases in more countries including the UK and Canada, and new types of payment methods including bank transfer payments.

In 2023, Taboola integrated Stripe with its NetSuite enterprise resource planning system, using the Stripe API and automated data entry processes with the third-party tool Workato so that the data in both systems is always in sync and accurate. Today, when a user creates an account by entering a credit card number in Stripe, or updates their credit card on file, that data is automatically sent from Stripe to NetSuite.

“It took our team over six months to complete the Stripe-NetSuite integration because they were working on other projects at the time and the requirements changed during the process,” said Rotter. “However, according to Max Fokin, information systems team leader at Taboola, it could take about one month of dedicated development time to complete the Stripe-NetSuite integration.”

To ensure payments were genuine, Taboola chief technology officer Lior Golan came up with an idea for a payment risk assessment model using Stripe Radar—a machine learning service built into Payments that’s trained on transactions that Stripe processes in 197 countries. Taboola’s risk assessment solution uses Radar to assign a 0–99 risk score to every credit card that a customer stores in their profile. Based on each card’s risk score, Taboola’s solution initiates the appropriate next steps for payment processing options, which can include bank transfers and monthly invoices.

Taboola is now integrating the Stripe Payment Element, a UI component for the web that allows Taboola to simplify and accelerate the support of more global payment options. This includes adding self-service SEPA Direct Debit payments in 36 countries in Europe and ACH Direct Debit in the US. Taboola will also use the Payment Element to support Pix payments in Brazil.

Results

Taboola earns $1.4B in global revenue in just eight years

Singolda’s decision to integrate his platform with Stripe in 2016 has paid dividends. One year after launch, Taboola was processing $100 million in international transactions.

Today, in 2024, Taboola earns over $1.4 billion annually from transactions processed using Stripe Payments in 12 currencies, 51 countries, and several payment methods. Additionally, Taboola supports more than 600 million daily users; onboards hundreds of customers every month; and continually adds support for more regions, currencies, and payment types.

“In the past six months alone, we added support for Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia using Stripe Payments,” said Rotter.

Customers can eliminate card fees

Taboola’s customers save money using direct bank transfers enabled with Payments. Between 2022 and 2023, one client paid a total of €10,500 in fees to process credit card payments. Since this client switched to bank transfers in the third quarter of 2023, it no longer pays any credit card fees.

Staff saves time and mitigates risk

By partnering with Stripe, Singolda has been able to adapt Taboola to keep up with global demand and emerging requirements. For example, by integrating Stripe with NetSuite, Taboola increased operational efficiency with automation and improved report accuracy.

Taboola’s support for direct bank transfers has significantly improved customers’ ability to spend. Globally, it has reduced the number of frozen accounts due to insufficient funds by 66%. In some markets, Taboola lowered uncollected credit card billing payments by 88%. And by building a risk assessment solution with Stripe Radar and switching accounts to prepayments, Taboola now blocks fraudulent actors, drives growth, and stays true to Singolda’s dream of helping anyone with a credit card build a career selling what they’re passionate about.