Stripe is a financial technology company that provides software and programming interfaces for accepting online payments. Founded by the Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, it is one of the most valuable privately held technology companies and a default choice for internet businesses.
What it is
Stripe lets a website or app take payments with a small amount of code. Over time it added products for subscriptions and invoicing, marketplaces and platforms, fraud prevention, in person card readers, card issuing, tax calculation and company formation. Its tools are used by businesses from solo founders to large corporations.
History
The Collisons founded the company in 2010 in Palo Alto, California. In 2011 they raised 2 million dollars from investors that included well known technology figures and venture firms, and Stripe launched publicly that September. It introduced Stripe Connect in 2012 and Atlas, a service to help startups incorporate in the United States, in 2016. Radar for fraud prevention and a billing product followed in 2018, and Terminal in 2019.
Funding rounds valued the company at 95 billion dollars in 2021, a figure that fell in later private valuations to 50 billion dollars in 2023. Acquisitions include Indie Hackers in 2017, Paystack in 2020 and Lemon Squeezy in 2024. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco and Dublin.
Why it matters to founders
Stripe made it far easier for small teams to charge customers worldwide, which helped create the modern wave of subscription software. Founders weigh its direct model, where they remain the seller, against merchant of record services that take over tax handling.
Related entries
See Patrick Collison, Stripe, Indie Hackers and Shopify.
Stripe is part of Revenue and funding.
Sources
Wikipedia entry for Stripe and TechCrunch report of April 2017. Reviewed October 2026.
