2024 marks Cloudflare’s 14th birthday. Birthday Week each year is packed with major announcements and the release of innovative new offerings, all focused on giving back to our customers and the broader Internet community. Birthday Week has become a proud tradition at Cloudflare and our culture, to not just stay true to our mission, but to always stay close to our customers. We begin planning for this week of celebration earlier in the year and invite everyone at Cloudflare to participate.
Months before Birthday Week, we invited teams to submit ideas for what to announce. We were flooded with submissions, from proposals for implementing new standards to creating new products for developers. Our biggest challenge is finding space for it all in just one week — there is still so much to build. Good thing we have a birthday to celebrate each year, but we might need an extra day in Birthday Week next year!
In case you missed it, here’s everything we announced during 2024’s Birthday Week:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
One more thing…
Cloudflare serves millions of customers and their millions of domains across nearly every country on Earth. However, as a global company, the payment landscape can be complex — especially in regions outside of North America. While credit cards are very popular for online purchases in the US, the global picture is quite different. 60% of consumers across EMEA, APAC and LATAM choose alternative payment methods. For instance, European consumers often opt for SEPA Direct Debit, a bank transfer mechanism, while Chinese consumers frequently use Alipay, a digital wallet.
At Cloudflare, we saw this as an opportunity to meet customers where they are. Today, we're thrilled to announce that we are expanding our payment system and launching a closed beta for a new payment method called Stripe Link. The checkout experience will be faster and more seamless, allowing our self-serve customers to pay using saved bank accounts or cards with Link. Customers who have saved their payment details at any business using Link can quickly check out without having to reenter their payment information.
These are the first steps in our efforts to expand our payment system to support global payment methods used by customers around the world. We'll be rolling out new payment methods gradually, ensuring a smooth integration and gathering feedback from our customers every step of the way.
Until next year
That’s all for Birthday Week 2024. However, the innovation never stops at Cloudflare. Continue to follow the Cloudflare Blog all year long as we launch more products and features that help build a better Internet.