Online payments firm Stripe launches in six more European countries

Stripe, the fast-growing online payments firm established by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison, has launched in six more European countries.

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

Businesses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg can now use Stripe’s products to process payments for online and mobile transactions.

Among the companies who have already started using the company's technology are German start-ups Jimdo, Book a Tiger and Croove as well as Dutch firms WeTransfer and Catawiki.

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

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.

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. In November, 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.

Stripe recently made its third acquisition when it bought the knowledge-sharing community for entrepreneurs Indie Hackers for an undisclosed sum in April.

Other buys include Kickoff, which was acquired in March 2013 and Tonic, which was bought last September.