Stripe Sees Boom In Investor Interest

Payments company Stripe has begun offering investors the opportunity to snatch up substantial stakes in the company from existing shareholders, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday (June 14).

While bids from those investors exceeded $4 billion, only around $1 billion were filled, the Journal said, “suggesting that many current Stripe shareholders believe their stock has a long way to climb.”

Among the biggest buyers? Shopify — one of Stripe’s largest customers — venture capital firm Sequoia, mutual fund Capital Group and buyout firm Silver Lake, sources told the paper.

The Journal notes that this offer “should relieve some pressure that the company faced from employees and investors to go public sooner rather than later.” The company could pursue an initial public offering in the late part of this year or in early 2022, the report said.

While Silicon Valley is crawling with investors seeking new places to invest at a time when low interest rates have made traditional investments less attractive, Stripe stands out a bit.

The company, which processes eCommerce payments, saw its fortunes boom during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting uptick on online shopping. More than 200,000 companies signed up for Stripe between the start of the pandemic and earlier this year, with the company’s system processing more than 5,000 requests each second in 2020.

As PYMNTS reported earlier this year, Stripe became the most valuable private company in Silicon Valley in March — valued at $95 billion — following a $600 million funding round.

In May, Stripe announced a series of product updates designed to expand the reach of its revenue platform. These include Payment Links, which allow businesses to build a full payment page that lets users send payments through a range of different means, including email, newsletters and social media.

Stripe also formed a partnership with GrabPay to help companies in Singapore and Malaysia accept GrabPay as a method of payment.