AN ONLINE payments company set up by two Limerick-born brothers has raised $18 million in its latest round of funding.
Stripe, based in San Francisco, enables developers to add a payments system to a website immediately. Patrick (23) and John (21) Collison have relocated to the US west coast to develop the business.
The funding values Stripe at about $100 million.
In March last year, the firm raised $2 million from Silicon Valley investors, valuing it at $20 million. At that point Stripe had yet to release a product.
The company’s product allows developers to take payments without having to set up their own merchant bank account or store credit card details. Instead, Stripe keeps the data secure and complies with anti-fraud regulations.
It is in direct competition with Paypal, which currently accounts for about 30 per cent of e-commerce transactions.
The three founders of PayPal – Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin – have all invested in Stripe.
Other backers include Sequoia Capital, which is said to have contributed $17 million in the latest round of funding, and Irish businessman Liam Casey.
Stripe declined to comment on the reports.
It is understood the company intends to use some of the funding to develop versions of its product for the international market. Currently the service is available only for US developers.
According to Patrick Collison, Stripe is enjoying prodigious growth; in a Twitter post last month, he claimed the company was growing at a rate of 60 per cent per month.
“There must be something red hot here for Sequoia to invest at that valuation,” said Michael Patrick, a lawyer at Fenwick West LLP who works with start-ups. “This isn’t naïve money.”
The brothers already have a successful track record in the technology industry having established Auctomatic, a company that manages inventory for sites like eBay, before selling it for a reported $5 million in 2008 to a Canadian firm.
John Collison was in transition year when the company was established. Patrick Collison is a former winner of the BT Young Scientist competition, taking the top prize for his programming language Croma.
John was studying at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Patrick was attending Harvard University in the US when they came up with the idea for Stripe. – (Additional reporting: Bloomberg)
