Stripe is a financial technology company that provides payment processing infrastructure for businesses operating online and in person. Headquartered in San Francisco, it enables companies to accept credit cards, debit cards, and other payment methods through software tools that developers can integrate directly into websites and applications. Its core product is an application programming interface — a set of code that lets software systems communicate — that allows businesses to build payment flows without constructing the underlying financial plumbing themselves.
Patrick Collison and John Collison, brothers from County Tipperary, Ireland, founded Stripe in 2010 while both were students at U.S. universities. The company was backed early by Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator, and later attracted investment from firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst. The Collison brothers are credited with making payment integration significantly simpler for developers at a time when existing solutions were technically cumbersome.
Beyond basic payment processing, Stripe has expanded into a broader suite of financial services. These include Stripe Atlas, which helps entrepreneurs incorporate companies and open bank accounts; Radar, a fraud-detection tool; Stripe Issuing, which allows businesses to create their own payment cards; and Stripe Connect, designed for platforms and marketplaces that need to route payments to multiple parties. The company also offers billing and subscription management, revenue recognition software, and financing products for businesses.
Stripe serves a wide range of customers, from individual developers and small businesses to large enterprises, including publicly traded companies and nonprofits. It operates across more than 40 countries and supports payments in dozens of currencies, positioning it as infrastructure for global commerce rather than a consumer-facing payments app.
The company has remained private, making it one of the most closely watched private technology companies in the world by valuation. Stripe competes with companies including