Fintech Stripe Scores Blockbuster $ 95 billion valuation

Thanks to the new fundraiser, Stripe is now worth more than other new darlings like Instacart Inc. Globally, it is still behind the Chinese fintech giant Ant Group Co. in terms of valuation.

As a payment processor for fast-growing startups and Internet companies, Stripe has benefited from the pandemic-induced boom in online shopping. Stripe customers including DoorDash Inc.,

Shopify Inc.

and Wayfair Inc.

all experienced an increase in demand, as consumers shifted their spending from traditional establishments.

“We are bigger now than all e-commerce [market] that’s when we started Stripe, ”said Dhivya Suryadevara, Stripe’s chief financial officer, in an interview. Stripe launched in 2010.

In the pandemic, some small businesses were dissatisfied with the measures Stripe and other payment processors took to protect themselves from possible losses. The maneuvers, including sometimes making companies wait more days or even months to access the money deposited in their accounts, have intensified the cash crisis in many companies.

Stripe does not disclose your payment volumes or financial results. The company said in a statement that it processes payments worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year to millions of companies worldwide and that it counts as customers more than 50 companies that use Stripe to process more than $ 1 billion annually.

In addition to payments, Stripe has been adding more financial services to the products it offers to customers. In December, Stripe announced that it was partnering with banks, including the Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

and Citigroup Inc.

to offer checking accounts and other business banking services to merchants.

Investors have long seen Stripe and other payment companies as a way to gain exposure to a number of fast-growing sectors. More recently, however, some have begun to wonder whether the race fueled by Covid in technology stocks is overblown, and they are starting to stop being popular technology companies and enter established sectors like banks and industries.

With the new financing, Stripe plans to increase its European business. The San Francisco-based company recently named Dublin as a second headquarters and added former Bank of England governor Mark Carney to its board of directors.

Closer to his home in California, Stripe got into the political speech fray that other tech giants are facing. After the pro-Trump riots at the Capitol in January, he stopped processing payments to President Trump’s fundraiser.

Write to Peter Rudegeair at [email protected]