Collison brothers see profits surge 236% at Stripe’s European arm

Stripe, the fast-growing online payments firm established by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison, saw turnover rise by 65 per cent at its Dublin-headquartered European subsidiary last year.

Newly filed accounts show revenues increased by €35.5 million at Stripe Payments Europe Limited, jumping from €14.2 million in 2014 to €49.7 million in 2015.

The Silicon Docks-based subsidiary, which is led by Don O’Leary, previously the second most senior executive at Twitter Dublin, recorded a €314,183 pretax profit last year. This marks a 236 per cent increase versus the €93,318 profit recorded for 2014.

Stripe, which was founded in 2009, offers payment processing services for online and mobile transactions. It supports credit card payments in more than 130 different currencies, bank transfers, Bitcoin and Alipay.

Facebook staff paid €123,000 as revenues surge to €7.9bn

---

StudyBundles signs deal with University of Manchester

---

Slack finds home in Dublin – away from Silicon Docks

---

Siro doubles workforce to 120 as broadband demand soars

---

The company, whose backers include Sequoia Capital and PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, is valued at $9 billion, based on a recent fundraising round last year. Late last month, the group announced it had raised $150 million in a Series D round led by CapitalG and General Catalyst, with existing investors such as Sequoia also involved.

Management wages

The latest accounts show cost of sales at the Dublin unit jumped to €32.8 million in 2015 from €11.5 million while administrative expenses increased from €2.5 million to €16.5 million.

Shareholders' funds rose to €2.6 million as against €2.1 million in 2014. Cash at bank and in hand increased to €102 million from just €10 million a year earlier.

The company owed €73.8 million to its parent compared to €3.5 million in 2014.

The Dublin unit employed just 7 people last year with staff costs totalling €854,520. This includes an amount of €324,528 paid in management wages and salaries and €50,438 in share-based compensation.

Stripe said it would use the Series D funding to increase the pace of its international expansion, broaden its developer tools and widen its scope to include more of the problems that businesses face and help firms to get started.

The San Francisco-headquartered company, which employs more than 500 people globally, now operates in 25 countries, including Japan, where it recently officially opened for business.

It has users in 110 countries and counts firms such as Macy's, Bloomingdale's, GE, Adidas, DocuSign, Slack, Nasdaq and the NFL among its customers.