Payment Processor Stripe Surpasses Facebook in Terms of Value

Online payment service provider Stripe has raised $ 600 million in a new funding round. This means that the start-up now has a price tag of approximately 95 billion dollars.

Stripe is, therefore, the most valuable pre-IPO company ever, more valuable than Facebook pre-IPO in 2012. In one year, Stripe’s value has nearly tripled.

With Stripe’s technology, Internet companies and online marketplaces make billions of dollars in payments annually for millions of users. Clients include consumer apps and websites such as Airbnb and The RealReal and business creators of enterprise software such as GitHub and Twilio. Amazon, Salesforce and Lyft also use Stripe.

The corona crisis has also further accelerated the transition to online payments, benefiting Stripe, among others. In addition, Stripe also has partnerships with banks in the field of online payments, such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Barclays.

The company was founded in 2010 by two Irish brothers, now 32-year-old Patrick Collison and his younger brother John, 30. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, their assets rose to $ 11.4 billion each at last valuation, against 4.3 billion dollars in the latest round of funding.

Stripe wants to invest in, among other things, its European activities, in particular at the Dublin headquarters. This is due to the increasing demand for its services. Stripe also has a headquarters in the American city of San Francisco.

For the time being, Stripe’s focus is on acquisitions. The company currently has no plans to go public yet. Previously, Stripe managed to bind former governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, as a director. As a director, Carney focuses, among other things, on arranging funds for companies to help initiatives to reduce the emission of harmful substances.