Ben Thompson: prediction

Transcript context

…In his excellent newsletter, Stratechery, Ben often argues that whoever controls the customer relationship shapes the entire ecosystem. And in mobile apps, there's always been this interesting tension here with in- app purchases where historically app developers had an intermediated relationship with their customer through app store policies. Over the past year, that layer has started to open up. Mobile developers can choose what they use for in- app payments. Developers now have more freedom, but with that freedom comes new challenges. App store payments were previously handling a whole bunch of different tasks like payments, tax, fraud, disputes, all bundled together. Stripe managed payments is built for this new world, handling all that operational complexity for you with Stripe as the merchant of record. And with our new app to webflow, customers can check out in seconds in an experience that feels native. It converts like in-app payments, but it runs on Stripe. The public markets indicate as of January 2026 that SaaS is canceled. Are they right? I think it's probably a mix. I think one of the brilliance of American business is… Actually, this is one of my theories about why the Europeans are so gung-ho about data privacy and regulation is because they so often interact with European companies. So I was in Paris a couple years ago, and of course going on a tourist trip, going to the Louvre, going to the Museum of Modern Art or whatever it is, just seeing a bunch of museums. They all have their own homegrown registration systems and they're collecting so much data. And they're wildly insecure.…

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