Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bit harsh. Stripe's value add is handing you an API and doing all of the hard work behind the scenes, same as Twilio (integrating with far flung telco gateways with byzantine interfaces). It's not necessary for Stripe to handle payment flows or issue cards themselves. Success is if customers are willing to pay Stripe instead of wrangling all of those vendors together themselves (which sounds like a good bet…
I'm not reading it as criticism. Considering Stripe forbids financial services in their t&c's, and this allows Stripe users to implement financial services, the question is, what kind of financial services are now allowed? Would be great to hear a few use cases for Treasury that can't be done with existing Connect platform (and which fall within t&c's). Genuinely curious.
Stripe Connect can't be used to hold funds from many rides for a month; they have to pay it out to a bank account (which they might not have) or to a disbursement card, which (because loan repayments are generally not paid on a card in the U.S.) likely doesn't solve their problem without withdrawing cash and buying a money order. That is extra effort and cost for the driver.
Stripe Treasury would let the rideshare platform give their drivers an embedded money management account. That would allow indefinitely holding money, and would allow them to use e.g. bill pay for car payments, similar to the way that many HNers probably pay their own car payments today.
This is good for the platform (solves a pain point for many drivers) and good for the drivers (they get faster access to their funds, decreasing the likelihood they'll get dinged for a late repayment, and can spend less of their time managing low-value-added money movement when they could instead be driving).