John Collison, co-founder of Stripe.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Online payments technology provider Stripe announced on Sunday that it has raised a new $ 600 million round of financing that values the company at $ 95 billion – almost triple the last reported $ 36 billion valuation in April 2020, according to PitchBook data.
Stripe, which makes software that allows companies to accept payments over the internet, plans to invest the new capital in its European operations, the company said in a statement. Thirty-one of the 42 countries in which Stripe operates are located in Europe, and President and co-founder John Collison highlighted Ireland – where the company is based – as a particular area of focus.
Founded more than a decade ago, today Stripe is by far the most valuable private fintech company, with Robinhood losing to a valuation of around $ 11.7 billion after investors issued a $ 3 billion check to the company amid this year’s GameStop chaos.
Stripe had impressive growth during the pandemic, as its revenue is largely linked to the growth of online shopping. In his previous round of financing last April, Stripe arrived early to highlight the Covid-19 outbreak as “pushing the online economy” and said “several years of offline to online migration are being compressed into several weeks”.
“We are investing in the infrastructure that will drive Internet commerce in 2030 and beyond,” wrote CFO Dhivya Suryadevara, who joined the company in August after leaving his position as General Motors CFO. “The pandemic has taught us many things about society, including how much can be achieved – and paid for – online, but the Internet is not yet the engine of the global economic progress it could be.”
In December, the company launched banking services through partnerships with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Barclays and Evolve Bank & Trust.
But despite its growing growth and appreciation, the company has remained silent about the prospect of a Wall Street debut, as John Collison told CNBC last year that the company “has no plans” to go public immediately.
Key investors in the new round of the H series include Allianz, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). Previous investors include Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, Peter Thiel, and Alphabet’s late-stage investment arm, Capital G, among others.
Earlier this year, Stripe invested $ 102 million in a Series B round for Fast – a smaller San Francisco-based online checkout company. Stripe, who also led the start-up’s Series A, is the payment base for Fast’s checkout product.
Stripe is a six-time CNBC Disruptor 50 Company and landed at the top of the list in 2020.
Correction: the first paragraph of this story has been updated to reflect that Stripe’s last valuation is $ 95 billion.