Founded in 2011, ‘Stripe’ is an American technology company, operating in over 25 countries. The company allows both private individuals and businesses to accept payments over the Internet in many forms. Apart from the payment services, Stripe focuses on providing the technical, fraud prevention, and banking infrastructure required to operate online payment systems. Flooding major headlines, Stripe’s valuation has raised $150 million to fund their expansion operations taking the valuation to a total of $9.2 billion. This cements its status as a major player in the crowded digital payments space, heralding a possible initial public offering. Let’s look into the growth of Stripe and its implications on Bitcoin:
What Stripe does?
‘Stripe’ focusses on online payment channels and how various technologies can be leveraged to ease the experience for customers and retailers. Using Stripe, web developers can integrate payment processing into their websites without having to register and maintain a merchant account. For small scale retailers, this offering is a blessing in disguise. Stripe has a two-day waiting period for initial transactions, during which time it profiles the businesses involved. Later it builds a safe shield to protect against potential fraud. Stripe then transfers the funds directly into the bank account linked to the payee.
Stripe’s investors and backing:
The increase in the rate of online transactions and the higher demographic going ‘cashless’ has made this market viable. Understanding the potentiality of the market, John and Patrick Collison founded Stripe in 2010. The list of investors for Stripe includes: Y Combinator, Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Redpoint Ventures, Chris Dixon, and Aaron Levie. Stripe’s valuation depends on the fact that more commerce will move to mobile apps even when people are in stores. Hence the company capitalizes on this open market space of mobile and electronic payments.
Stripe and Bitcoin payment processing:
In March 2014, CEO Patrick Collison announced that Stripe would support bitcoin transactions. Owing to the zero-fee structure of the Bitcoin network, the cryptocurrency immediately became an integral part of the payment app. The current round of funding is aimed at expansion of the company. Wayne Gaybrick, Stripe chief financial officer, said Stripe raised the funds to acquire companies and invest in global expansion. Stripe has acquired three firms and launched in France, Japan, France, Singapore and Spain this year. As Stripe is looking out for cross border transactions with the trail of expansions, this might be positive news for Bitcoin adoption as that would be the fastest and easiest method of payment across borders.
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