Stripe raises $150m in funding as valuation soars to $9bn

Payments company Stripe has raised $150 million in its latest funding round, valuing the company founded by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison at $9 billion.

The Series D round was led by CapitalG and General Catalyst, with existing investors such as Sequoia Capital also involved.

Its previous $5 billion valuation was based on a funding round in 2015.

The company said it will use the 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.

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Stripe already signalled its intentions in this regard when it launched Stripe Atlas in February this year, a service that helps companies get incorporated more easily in the United States. Among the services offered by Atlas are incorporation, share issuance and setting up bank accounts.

Stripe Connect

In July it launched Stripe Connect, a product aimed at start-up online marketplaces hoping to be the next Airbnb or Uber, giving them access to more than one billion potential sellers globally. The product allows firms to sign up and verify service providers – such as drivers or sellers – in each of the 25 countries in which Stripe operates.

The payments firm was set up in 2009 with the goal of making it easier for website owners to start accepting payments. It now offers payment-processing services for online and mobile transactions, and supports credit-card payments in more than 130 currencies, bank transfers, bitcoin and Alipay.

Stripe now 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. Both presidential campaigns in the recent US election also used Stripe.

Stripe employs more than 500 people globally, and recently officially opened for business in Japan.