Challenge

When inspiration or a market opportunity strikes, developers need to move fast without locking themselves into proprietary tools. Supabase launched its Postgres app development platform in 2020 to give developers an open-source alternative to proprietary solutions. As an integrated back-end-as-a-service provider, Supabase now powers more than a million databases for both enterprises and indie developers alike.

"We help make it as seamless as possible for builders to launch and grow," said Kevin Grneberg, lead billing engineer at Supabase. "Rather than integrating with different providers for storage, authentication, databases, edge functions and other solutions, businesses can leverage our platform to build fully-fledged AI apps."

To provide that seamless experience, Supabase needed a reliable way to capture payments without creating complexity for its users. Rather than have a developer pay separately for the different provider services delivered through the Supabase platform, the company built a custom billing system to track specific product usage per customer and calculate bills internally. To collect payments, Supabase required a partner that could easily integrate with its homegrown billing calculation system through developer-friendly APIs, along with being capable of securely storing, managing and processing credit card payments from users in multiple countries.

At the same time, the company knew that rapid scaling would expose its payment system to rising fraud risks. With the rise of AI-powered application development, Supabase saw an increase in payment fraud attempts including unauthorised card usage, payment shortfalls and illegitimate disputes that could drag down revenue and threaten its relationship with the card networks. Supabase's lean engineering team needed a customisable fraud solution that could help it prevent specific fraud types without taking time away from product development.

Solution

Supabase chose to launch its platform using Stripe Payments as its core payments infrastructure, thanks to its reliability and comprehensive features. "Stripe was the obvious choice because it is proven, stable and provides global coverage. There might be some new players on the market, but they haven't proven themselves yet, and your payment service provider is not the system where you want to try the newest entrant just for the sake of it," said Grneberg.

Stripe Payments helped Supabase manage the complexity of how it charges customers: after calculating usage and charges in its own billing engine, Supabase uses the Payments API to automatically pass the final amount due to Stripe for payment processing. To keep its Postgres database of billing data in sync with Stripe, Supabase developed an open-source stripe-sync-engine that uses Stripe webhooks to update records for customers, invoices and payments. Additionally, Supabase used Stripe's AI-powered authorisation optimisations such as Adaptive Acceptance, network tokens and card account updater to help improve acceptance rates and reduce churn.

Supabase implemented Stripe's Optimized Checkout Suite to create a frictionless payment experience that scales globally with minimal engineering effort. The company also embedded the Payment Element into its Next.js front end, allowing customers to easily manage payment details while supporting credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link a digital wallet built by Stripe that autofills payment data for faster checkout. It added the Address Element to collect complete addresses in preparation for future tax compliance requirements.

To better manage fraud risk, Supabase used Stripe Radar for Fraud Teams to create custom rules for requesting 3DS authentication of high-risk markets and blocking suspicious transactions, disposable emails and transactions with CVC mismatches. The company also used Smart Disputes, an AI-powered solution that automates chargeback response by automatically collecting, compiling and submitting evidence.

Results

Supabase increased global reach to more than 150 countries

Supabase has scaled to more than 150,000 transactions per month across more than 150 countries with a 192% increase in customers over the past 6 months.

Supabase recovered over $100,000 in monthly revenue through Stripe optimisations

Features such as Adaptive Acceptance, card account updater and network tokens helped Supabase recover over $100,000 each month over the past 6 months.

"As we scale, these features have come in quite handy for preventing lost revenue, while making sure customers don't accidentally lose access due to something as simple as an expired card," said Grneberg.

Link now captures 39% of all payments

By enabling Link, Supabase helped simplify the checkout experience for its customers. Today, 39% of all payments are completed through Link, reducing checkout friction while giving Supabase more confidence.

"If a customer used Link in the past on another platform, it prefills the payment details when checking out with us. For me, it feels like we have more safety from fraud because these customers are more likely to be legitimate instead of engaging in random card testing," said Grneberg.

Supabase achieved a 45% win rate from Smart Disputes

By using Stripe's Smart Disputes feature, Supabase achieved a 45% win rate on transactions over $50 reducing the company's chargeback burden.

"Disputes are very annoying to deal with because they take a lot of time going back and forth collecting information and communicating with customers. As we have scaled and gotten more exposure, we have seen disputes skyrocket. Automating the process helps us keep from getting overwhelmed while staying in good standing with the card networks," said Grneberg.