FinTech startup Stripe is heading to Dubai for its debut into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), CNBC reported on Tuesday (April 6).
Valued at $95 billion after its latest funding round in March, the Silicon Valley payments processing platform is among the world’s most valuable FinTechs.
“The opportunity for startups in the UAE is enormous,” Matt Henderson, Stripe’s business lead for Europe, Middle East, Africa, told CNBC. “The opportunity for Stripe is very large as well.”
Launched in 2010 by two brothers, Patrick Collison and John Collison, Stripe’s digital payment solutions are in competition with PayPal, Adyen and Square.
“The UAE has clearly got a booming digital economy,” Henderson told CNBC. Businesses operating online in the UAE can now use Stripe to accept online payments.
He added that “there are a lot of great local businesses that haven’t yet globalized. One of the ways that will help them grow and therefore help them to resonate with investors is opening up these new markets.”
The UAE’s eCommerce market is on track to reach a valuation of $27.1 billion by 2022, according to the International Trade Administration, per CNBC.
“We’ve already seen just last year more than $600 million of investment into startups in the UAE,” Henderson told CNBC. “The ingredients are there for a much, much bigger trajectory.”
“You’ve got this combination of talent, of investment, and entrepreneurship as well,” he added. “So we see that there’s going to be a lot of exciting emerging technology businesses in the UAE.”
Stripe’s March funding round of $600 million was led by Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency, Allianz, Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, AXA and Sequoia Capital. More than 200,000 companies have signed with Stripe since the pandemic gripped the world last year. The company said it processed more than 5,000 requests per second in 2020.
Secondary market investors in February anticipated that Stripe’s valuation would top $115 billion. In April 2020, its valuation was $36 billion.
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