Stripe is an American technology company based in San Francisco, California.^[2] Its software allows individuals and businesses to make and receive payments over the Internet.

Irish entrepreneurs John and Patrick Collison founded Stripe in 2010.^[3][4] In June 2010, Stripe received seed funding from Y Combinator, a start-up accelerator.^[5] In May 2011, Stripe received a $2 million investment from venture capitalists Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.^[6] In February 2012, Stripe received an $18 million Series A investment, led by Sequoia Capital at a $100 million valuation.^[7][8] Stripe launched publicly in September 2011 after an extensive private beta.^[9] Less than a year after its public launch, Stripe received a $20 million Series B investment.^[10] In March 2013, Stripe acquired chat and task-management application Kick-off.^[11]

In 2016, Stripe was valued at over $9 billion when it raised a $150 million round.^[12] In its next funding round in September 2018, Stripe received a $20 billion valuation while raising $245 million.^[13]

In 2019, Stripe raised an additional $100 million from investment firm Tiger Global Management, boosting the payment startup's valuation to $22.5 billion.^[14] Currently, Stripe is operating across four engineering hubs in Seattle, Dublin, San Francisco and Singapore. ^[15]

In September 2019, Stripe raised $250 million in a new funding round to take its enterprise value to $35 billion.^[16]

Stripe provides the technical, fraud prevention, and banking infrastructure required to operate online payment systems.^[17]

Stripe provides APIs that web developers can use to integrate payment processing into their websites and mobile applications.^[18][3] In April 2018, the company released anti-fraud tools that run alongside payment APIs to block fraudulent transactions.^[19]

The company expanded its services to include a billing product for online businesses. The new service operates within the Stripe platform, allowing businesses to manage subscription recurring revenue and invoicing.^[20]

On February 24, 2016, the company launched the Atlas platform that allows startups to incorporate more easily in the U.S. The platform originally launched as invite-only.^[21] In March 2016, Cuba was added to the list of countries covered under the program.^[22] Atlas was relaunched with improvements the following year. As of April 2017, Atlas had signed more than 200 international startups.^[23] As of March 2019, startups from 120 countries have used Stripe Atlas to start their business.^[24]

On April 30, 2018, the company announced an expansion to Atlas. The upgrades to Atlas included the ability to be used to set up Delaware-based limited liability companies.^[25]

In July 2018, Stripe began a platform for companies to issue Mastercard and Visa credit cards, available in private beta.^[26]

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.^[27] Terminal also includes detailed documentation along with SDKs for iOS, Javascript, and one for Android is in development.^[28] On June 11, 2019, Stripe made Terminal available to all U.S. users, ending the product’s beta testing phase.^[29][30]

Stripe has invested in a growing number of startup companies since at least 2017.^[31]

The company 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,^[32] with a second investment in Monzo’s Series E fundraising round reported on October 10, 2018.^[33] Monzo’s valuation grew from approximately $350 million^[32] to $1.27 billion^[33] 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,^[34][35] producing valuation growth of more than 600% between Stripe's initial investment in Monzo and its 2019 investment.

On August 28, 2018, TechCrunch reported that Stripe was leading the Series A fundraising round for Nigerian payment-processing company Paystack. The report noted this as an “interesting twist,” as Paystack is called “Stripe-like” and is reported to offer similar functionalities as Stripe’s.^[36]

On October 8, 2018, Stripe reportedly participated in a $14 million Series A fundraising round for Lambda School, and online software and coding school.^[37]

On February 13,2019, Stripe co-led — with Stripe investor General Catalyst — a $40 million Series B fundraising round for Rapyd, a “fintech as a service” startup.^[38]

On April 17, 2019, Stripe participated in a $40 million Series B fundraising round for Pilot, which provides cloud-based accounting automation services powered by artificial intelligence.^[39]

On June 6, 2019, Stripe led a $22.5 million fundraising round for Step, a financial services startup offering fee-free money management (banking) accounts to teenagers.^[40]

On September 25, 2019, Stripe participated in the $2.7 million seed funding round for the Philippine-based payment processing company PayMongo.^[41]