Stripe (company)
Stripe is an American financial services and software as a service company headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The company primarily offers payment processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
History
entrepreneur brothers John and Patrick Collison founded Stripe in 2010, initially using the name /dev/payments.In March 2013, Stripe made its first acquisition, Kickoff, a chat and task-management application.
Stripe was founded in Palo Alto, but moved to San Francisco in 2012. As of 2019, Stripe was operating across four engineering hubs in Seattle, Dublin, San Francisco and Singapore. Stripe has its headquarters in San Francisco's South of Market area, but announced in October 2019 that it would be moving to Oyster Point in the neighboring city of South San Francisco at some point in 2021.
Services
Payment processing
Stripe provides APIs that web developers can use to integrate payment processing into their websites and mobile applications. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Stripe succeeded by " the complex, creaking infrastructure of online payments into a handful of lines of code that could be inserted into a clients website."In April 2018, the company released anti-fraud tools, branded "Radar", that block fraudulent transactions.
In 2018, the company expanded its services to include a billing product for online businesses. The service operates within the Stripe platform, allowing businesses to manage subscription recurring revenue and invoicing.
Connect
In 2012, Stripe launched Connect, a service allowing businesses to create platforms, such as marketplaces, where Stripe handles the payment processing between buyers and sellers.Atlas
On February 24, 2016, the company launched the Atlas platform to register U.S. companies for startups. The platform originally launched as invite-only. In March 2016, Cuba was added to the list of countries covered under the program. Atlas was relaunched with improvements the following year. As of April 2017, Atlas had signed more than 200 international startups. As of March 2019, startups from 120 countries have used Stripe Atlas to start their business.Companies registered using Atlas can be Delaware-based C corporations, or, as of April 30, 2018, limited liability companies.
Issuing
In July 2018, Stripe began a platform for companies to issue Mastercard and Visa credit cards, available in private beta.Terminal
On September 17, 2018, Stripe announced a new point of sale solution called Terminal, initially launched as an invite-only beta. The service offers physical credit card readers designed to work with Stripe. As of July 2020, Terminal supports two card readers: Verifone P400 and BBPOS Chipper 2X BT. On June 11, 2019, Stripe made Terminal available to all U.S. users, ending the product's beta testing phase.Lending
Stripe ventured into lending in 2019, when it began offering loans and credit cards to businesses in the United States. The company stated that loans are approved automatically using machine learning models, with no human intervention.Growth
In May 2011, Stripe received a $2 million investment from venture capitalists Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. Stripe launched publicly in September 2011 after an extensive private beta.In May 2020, Stripe expanded its services in 5 new markets in Europe: the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Malta.
| Date | Funding Type | Number of Investors | Money Raised | Lead Investor | Valuation |
| Aug 2, 2010 | Seed Round | 1 | — | Y Combinator | — |
| Mar 28, 2011 | Seed Round | 4 | $2M | — | — |
| Feb 9, 2012 | Series A | 1 | $18M | Sequoia Capital | $100M |
| Jul 9, 2012 | Series B | 9 | $20M | General Catalyst | — |
| Jan 22, 2014 | Series C | 4 | $80M | Founders Fund | $1.75bn |
| Dec 2, 2014 | Series C | 7 | $70M | Thrive Capital | $3.5bn |
| Jul 31, 2015 | Series C | 7 | $100M | — | — |
| Nov 25, 2016 | Series D | 3 | $150M | CapitalG, General Catalyst | $9bn |
| Sep 27, 2018 | Series E | 5 | $245M | Tiger Global Management | $20bn |
| Jan 29, 2019 | Series F | 1 | $100M | Tiger Global Management | $22.5bn |
| Sep 19, 2019 | Series G | 3+ | $250M | Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz | $35B |
| Apr 16, 2020 | Series G Extension | 3+ | $600M | Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, GV and Andreessen Horowitz | $36B |
Investments
Stripe is reported to have participated in two funding rounds for Monzo, a "challenger bank" based in the U.K. Stripe's first investment in Monzo was reported on November 6, 2017, with a second investment in Monzo's Series E fundraising round reported on October 10, 2018. Monzo's valuation grew from approximately $350 million to $1.27 billion through these two rounds of fundraising. Stripe participated in a third round of funding for Monzo on June 24, 2019, which raised approximately $144 million in funding for Monzo at a valuation of approximately $2.5 billion.Stripe has invested in companies offering similar services as themselves, but in different geographical regions. In August 2018, Stripe invested in Paystack, a Nigerian payment processor, and, in September 2019, invested in PayMongo, a Philippine payment processor.
On June 6, 2019, Stripe led a $22.5 million fundraising round for Step, a financial services startup offering fee-free money management accounts to teenagers.
On March 26th, 2020, Stripe led a $20m Series A fundraising round for Fast, a company creating a universal, one-click checkout service.