Stripe, an electronic payment system has declared today that it will be acquiring more funds. Stripe is now worth $20 billion, after raising $245 million.
Stripe’s main goal is to streamline the online payment process. This includes removing the hassle of making payments for any kind of product. This will cut out the middle man, such as credit card companies, banks, custom payment methods, and wallets.
At the time of the last round of investment, the payment company was valued at $6 billion. This is a huge monetary jump for Stripe. The investment roundup was led by Tiger Global Management.
Other venture capitalists included Sequoia and DST Global. Current investors include Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures. The electronic payments startup will be using this money to make Stripe into a global entity.
Stripe wants to hire more people in order to elevate its global representation. This team of new people will be known as Stripe’s “distributed global engineering team.”
Co-founders Patrick and John Collison both belong from Ireland, so naturally, they have their offices in Ireland. Other places include Seattle and San Francisco. The next place on their agenda is Singapore.
Cutting edge technology has always been the primary driving force at Stripe. The startup can proudly claim, “all told, the company deployed more than 3,200 new versions of its core API over the past year.”
The fundraiser highlights the ever-growing scenario for raising money from private venture capitalists at incredibly high evaluations. Such investors and venture capitalists are always looking for the next big thing.
For them, money is just a small piece of the puzzle. They want high potential, rapidly growing businesses where they know they will get their return on investment. Many startups are canceling or postponing going public.
Electronic payment companies choose to stay private in order to attract big investments.
In an interview, John Collison said, “We have no plans to go public.”
He further added, “We’re fortunate to be in the position that the Stripe business is performing very well and the long-term opportunity is that we’re very optimistic to providing the richer stack to businesses. Strong businesses do not always tend to be dependent on outside funding.”
The app is available in 25 countries. Some of Stripe’s most prolific clients include Uber, Google, Spotify, Mindbody and Didi.
E-commerce is still an untapped market as there are no real competitors to Amazon. Online payment companies have a lot to gain, and that industry still has a lot of potential. Paypal has been dominant for the most part, but ever since the arrival of companies such as Stripe and Ayden, a lot of money is on the line.
Stripe is not just streamlining the payment process, it is also providing its clients with other features such as fraud detection, refund policies, and issues loans to its clientele.
With such a broad suite of products, it is no wonder Stripe has won the jackpot.
Fazeel Ashraf
Jazib Zaman
