Profile: Stripe – FinTech startup serving Google and Amazon

Stripe is a fast-growing fintech startup offering innovative online payment solutions to global businesses

Regardless of your definition of a startup, it’s hard to deny the rise of online payment business Stripe. The San Francisco-based fintech is behind a suite of online payment solutions originally designed for small businesses navigating their way around ecommerce, but now used by tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon.

Stripe was founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison (below), who wanted to make life simpler for those new online businesses looking to establish online billing and payment systems. Fast forward nine years and, in 2019, the company featured on the Forbes Fintech 50 list of the most innovative companies in fintech, recognised as the most highly valued private fintech company in the US (as of February 2019).

Complete fintech toolkit

Stripe explains its product offering as “the complete toolkit for internet business”. This, it says, is vital due to the fact that only around 3% of global commerce happens online, despite internet businesses growing at a rate that far outstrips the rest of the economy. The reasons for this disparity, it explains, include a complex regulatory environment, a “byzantine” global financial system and a lack of talent in the sector.

It is against these challenges that Stripe plays its trump card: that its users can be up and running – and trading – within minutes of setting up its payment platform.

Stripe offers solutions in three key areas:

• Payments: a complete payments platform, that is fully integrated and supports both online and inperson payments
• Billing and subscriptions: a suite of tools that allows businesses to scale
• And Stripe Connect: a set of “building blocks” that supports ecommerce, crowdfunding, fintech, ondemand business models and events and travel

Customers then apply these services across a range of business models such as ecommerce and retail, B2B platforms, software as a service, B2C markets and non-profit and fundraising organisations.

Currently, the list of names served by Stripe includes Amazon, Google, Spotify, Uber, Deliveroo, Slack, Microsoft and many more. Its technology allows customers to accept payments worldwide and receive cardholder support in 135 countries.