New funding round

Stripe, the international payment processing company, has raised $600m in funding and has a market valuation of around $95bn. higher than the valuation of Facebook or Uber on the eve of their IPOs. Stripe's millions of customers include dozens of major companies around the world, and it is scaling steadily.

International online payments company Stripe announced on Sunday it had raised a new $600bn funding round to accelerate business development in Europe.

As a result, Stripe's market valuation rose to $95bn, almost three times the last reported valuation of $36bn, when the company also raised $600m in April 2020. Thus, Stripe could be considered the most expensive private fintech company in the world.

If Stripe decides to IPO it could be one of the largest IPOs in history, as it is valued higher than the $80bn raised by Facebook (FB) before its IPO in 2012, and Uber's valuation of $72bn ahead of its IPO in 2019.

Founded in 2011 by Irish-born brothers John and Patrick Collison, Stripe has headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin as well as offices in London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and other cities.

Stripe processes payments from customers around the world with multi-card support in more than 135 countries, its partnerships with regulators, many financial institutions, payment networks, banks and consumer wallets make it one of the world's leading payment processors. In December, Stripe launched banking services through partnerships with Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup (C), Barclays and Evolve Bank Trust.

Stripe directly competes with Paypal (PYPL) and Square (SQ), which had a market valuation as of Monday 15 March of $297bn and $114bn respectively.

The main investors in Stripe's latest $600bn funding round include Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management Research Co., Sequoia Capital and the National Treasury Agency of Ireland (NTMA).

Stripe will use the funds raised as an investment in infrastructure that will support online commerce in 2030 and beyond.