Stripe, Inc.
Explore Stripe
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Stripe, Inc.
Explore Stripe
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Company History
Founded 2010 in South San Francisco, California and Dublin, Ireland
Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe in 2010 after experiencing how difficult it was for developers to accept online payments. The company grew by making payment integration fast, well-documented, and reliable enough that startups and platforms chose it before legacy processors adapted.
Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe to simplify online payments for developers.
Stripe became known for developer-friendly payment APIs and fast onboarding.
Stripe acquired Paystack to deepen payment infrastructure in African markets.
Stripe completed the Bridge acquisition and expanded stablecoin infrastructure.
Businesses on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total volume, up 34% from 2024.
Stripe announced a tender offer at a $159 billion private valuation.
The company was founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison, two incredibly brilliant brothers from rural Ireland. They had previously sold a software startup (Auctomatic) for $5 million when they were still teenagers.
To fix a massive, broken system. In 2010, accepting credit cards on a website was a total nightmare. You had to physically go to a bank, wait weeks for approval, and integrate highly complex, terrible legacy code. The Collison brothers were furious at how difficult it was for developers to get paid.
Seven lines of code. Stripe completely bypassed the legacy banking nightmare. They built a highly elegant, incredibly simple API (Application Programming Interface). A software developer could literally copy and paste seven lines of Stripe code into their website and instantly start accepting credit cards globally in 10 minutes.
The ultimate Silicon Valley network. They joined the legendary Y Combinator startup accelerator. Their incredibly simple API became a massive, instant viral hit among all the other Y Combinator startups. Because those startups (like Instacart and DoorDash) grew to become massive multi-billion dollar titans, Stripe grew massively alongside them.
No. Stripe is famously, highly stubbornly one of the absolute most valuable private companies on Earth. Despite years of massive Wall Street begging, the Collison brothers fiercely refuse to execute an IPO, vastly preferring the secrecy and long-term focus of staying private.