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.
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