Merkle (www.merkle.com), a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company and part of dentsu, announces its partnership with Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, following the launch of Stripe Partner Ecosystem (SPE), a major expansion of its partner programme.

As companies accelerate digital modernisation efforts, they are increasingly looking beyond their own organisation for help in navigating evolving complex business models and ever-changing customer demands.

As a leading global agency, the partnership will allow Merkle to provide companies with expertise across CX, creative, analytics and customer strategy, helping businesses fully participate in the digital economy.

The SPE programme will see Merkle partner with payment providers to implement and provide managed services for new clients, provide consulting, consumer analytics, decisioning and tech services that support the migration of clients to a new business model. The programme will provide a set of services, supported by the payment provider, to address a specific consumer purchasing/revenue challenge identified in the payment providers reporting.

Merkle, and its clients, will benefit from the expertise of these forward-thinking payment providers in integrating modern economic infrastructure into complex IT and customer experience platforms and legacy payment systems, many of which predate the internet.

Partners will benefit from a comprehensive package of resources that will allow them to collaborate more effectively with Stripe users. Companies across a vast range of industries, sizes, and geographies will benefit from Stripe’s growing community of third-party collaborators.   

“We’re thrilled to deepen our partnership with Stripe and look forward to supporting more joint customers at scale,” said Nick McCarthy, SVP alliances at Merkle. “Brands are responding to consumers demands not only for a frictionless online commerce experience but to evolve their traditional commercial model. Our companies share a vision for facilitating these transitions in a profitable manner for brands and partnering is a great way to accomplish that.”

Dorothy Copeland, vice president of global partnerships and alliances at Stripe said "The launch of the Stripe Partner Ecosystem coincides with more businesses looking beyond their organisation to navigate the internet economy, and Stripe making it easier to find the right partner for their needs." By partnering with Merkle and introducing a comprehensive set of partner resources, companies around the world will be able to accelerate their move to online commerce more easily."