Stripe Buys Lemon Squeezy in Bid to Scale Merchant of Record Selling

Payments processing startup Lemon Squeezy has been acquired by Stripe.

Lemon Squeezy announced the acquisition on its blog last week, saying the deal marks a culmination of a relationship that began when the company was founded in 2021.

“Along the way, we received many acquisition offers and (Series A) term sheets from investors,” the blog post said.

“But despite the allure of these opportunities, we knew that what we had built was truly special and needed the right partner to take it to the next level. We’re proud to say that we’ve found that partner in Stripe and have gone from idea to acquisition in under three years.”

Lemon Squeezy serves as a merchant of record — mostly for software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies — calculating and handling global sales tax for digital products. The company said it was founded with the goal of making selling digital products “as simple as opening a lemonade stand.” (Hence the name, short for the British expression “easy peasy lemon squeezy.”)

Commenting on the acquisition on X, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said the two companies were “going to scale merchant of record selling in a big way.” 

The acquisition comes weeks after reports that Stripe’s valuation had reached $70 billion, with venture capital firm Sequoia Capital offering to buy shares from investors hoping to cash out,

Stripe is one of the most valuable private tech companies, valued at $65 billion after a deal that let current and former employees cash out some of their shares. That’s up from the $50 billion valuation the company was pegged at in March, but below the $95 billion valuation Stripe achieved in 2021.

While analysts have closely monitored Stripe and other FinTech veterans, waiting to see when and how they may go public, co-founder John Collison said many firms go public too early and his company remains committed to creating products and opportunities to grow the business.

Meanwhile, Stripe recently teamed up with Sage to help improve cash flow management and payment processing for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

The collaboration, announced last week, will see Stripe’s financial infrastructure platform for businesses integrated into Sage’s solutions for SMBs, giving Sage customers more ways to pay and get paid.