FinTech Stripe Eyes Funding Round That Could Put Valuation At $100B

FinTech Stripe is considering a funding round to value it higher than the $36 billion it got on its last round, Bloomberg reports. According to people familiar with the discussions, the new valuation could hit as much as $70 billion or maybe as much as $100 billion, Bloomberg said.

If it got as high as $100 billion, it would make Stripe one of the most valuable venture-backed startups in the country, Bloomberg reported.

Stripe’s software is used by businesses to accept payments. The company competes with giants like Square and PayPal, and has benefited from the pandemic due to the increasing reliance on eCommerce as the pandemic forced people to stay away from physical spaces, and consequently resulted in more digital payments.

Bloomberg noted that the company has been taking advantage of the eCommerce interest, starting its own card-issuing service for U.S. clients and making plans to acquire a startup from Nigeria to further African expansion.

The company has also been fundraising this year, including a $600 million round from April, from investors Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, which afforded the company’s current $36 billion value. General Catalyst, Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures also participated, Bloomberg wrote.

Stripe was founded in 2010 by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, who sold their first company when they were teenagers for $5 million, according to Bloomberg. Both are worth around $4 billion each, as per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

John Collison, speaking with PYMNTS earlier this year, said the digital payments field could always improve, as illustrated by the 96 percent of marketplace and payments professionals saying sales conversion rates between site visits and people buying things could be better.

Stripe was in talks earlier this year with Bill Ackman, billionaire and SPAC investor, about possibly going public, as PYMNTS reported previously. As with all SPAC mergers, the process would consist of a merger with a blank-check company like Ackman’s. However, Ackman told media at the time that Stripe wasn’t “mature enough” to go public.