Stripe hits $1tn payments milestone in 2023

Irish-founded fintech Stripe processed more than $1 trillion (€910 billion) of payments for its clients last year, a 25 per cent rise in volume year on year.

The global payments giant, founded by Patrick and John Collison, is outstripping the US ecommerce market, which grew at a rate of 7.6 per cent last year, with the output of businesses using its technology now roughly equal to 1 per cent of global gross domestic product.

The figures show that Stripe is continuing to grow steadily, after growth of 26 per cent in 2022. The company hit a rough patch that year when payment growth showed a significant slowdown, and it announced it would cut back staff, shedding about 1,000 jobs globally.

But the fintech said it was “robustly cash flow positive” last year, a situation it expects to replicate in 2024.

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“This threshold is important, because it allows us to invest for the long term, building what we believe our users need 10 years from now, without regard for the natural volatility of capital markets,” the company said. “In addition, Stripe customers can be confident that we provide stable, long-term infrastructure with a durably sustainable business model.”

Stripe has also continued to expand its business. The fintech now supports more than 100 payment methods, with Stripe adding support for more than 50 in the past year. More than 100 companies are now processing more than $1 billion per year with Stripe.

[ Will this be the year that Stripe floats on the stock market? ]

Although the company initially focused on providing websites with a simple way to accept payments, the business has developed to include billing and in-person payments. Among the latest deals it has signed was a recently announced partnership with Hertz, which will see the car rental giant use Stripe for payments through its website and also in person through Stripe Terminal.

Among its revenue automation customers are Roblox, Figma, OpenAI, Atlassian and Nasdaq. “Overall, these products are being used by hundreds of thousands of businesses, and we expect the suite’s annual revenue run rate to pass $500 million over the next year,” Stripe said.

The fintech has also facilitated the growth of AI-focused companies, with twice as many going live on the platform last year as in 2022, with aggregate revenue from such companies up 249 per cent. Newcomers including Mistral and Perplexity have joined OpenAI, Anthropic and Midjourney in using Stripe.

At its peak, Stripe was valued at $95 billion; last year that valuation was almost halved to $50 billion after the company raised $6.5 billion in a funding round to cover costs related to vesting restricted stock units the company handed out to attract and retain staff.

But recent reports that the company and its investors bought up more than $1 billion of former and current employee shares put the current valuation at about $65 billion.

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