Online payments technology provider Stripe raised a new $600m funding round that values the company at $95bn, nearly tripling from $36bn since April 2020.
The new round makes Stripe the second most valuable private fintech company, behind Ant Financial, which is valued at $150bn.
Investors in the company’s latest funding include Allianz SE, AXA SA, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Co, Sequoia Capital and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency.
US-based Stripe will invest the new capital to boost its European operations, in particular, it plans to focus on its headquarters in Dublin, to support the escalating demand as well as expand its global payments and treasury network.
Stripe co-founder and president John Collison said, “Whether in FinTech, mobility, retail or SaaS, the growth opportunity for the European digital economy is immense.”
According to Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Leo Varadkar, the partnership between the Irish state and Stripe would create over 1,000 jobs in five years boosting the Irish tech ecosystem.
Founded in 2010 by Patrick Collison and his younger brother John, Stripe makes software that allows businesses to accept payments digitally. Boasting a clientele that includes Amazon.com Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and Lyft Inc, Stripe now counts more than 50 category leaders—companies processing each more than $1bn annually—as customers.
Some of its previous investors include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alphabet’s late-stage investing arm Capital G among others.
Despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, Stripe said that the pandemic helped in “pushing the economy online” adding that due to the lockdown-induced work from home norms, “several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks.”
Highlighting the importance of going digital, Stripe chief financial officer Dhivya Suryadevara said, “We’re investing in the infrastructure that will power internet commerce in 2030 and beyond.
“The pandemic taught us many things about society, including how much can be achieved — and paid for — online, but the internet still isn’t the engine for global economic progress that it could be.”
Suryadevara added, “While Stripe already processes hundreds of billions of dollars per year for millions of businesses worldwide, the opportunity ahead is much larger … than it was when the company was started 10 years ago.”
In December, the company even launched banking services to e-commerce providers through partnerships with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Barclays and Evolve Bank & Trust.
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