What is Stripe?
Financial infrastructure for the internet — payments, billing, and money movement via developer-first APIs.
- Category
- Payments / Financial Infrastructure
- Headquarters
- South San Francisco, CA & Dublin
- Founded
- 2010
- Employees
- ~10,000
- Total funding
- ~$9.4B equity
- Valuation
- ~$159B (Feb 2026, private)
What is Stripe?
Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform that lets businesses accept payments, send payouts, run subscriptions, and move money over the internet through a set of developer-first APIs. It is one of the most valuable private companies in the world: a February 2026 tender offer valued Stripe at $159 billion, and in 2025 businesses on the platform processed $1.9 trillion in total payment volume — up 34% year over year and roughly 1.6% of global GDP.
Founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, Stripe started as seven lines of code that let a developer accept a card payment and has grown into the default money layer for the internet economy. Its products span online and in-person payments, Billing for subscriptions, Connect for marketplaces and platforms, Radar for fraud, Tax for compliance, Issuing for card programs, and a fast-growing Revenue and Finance Automation suite. More than 5 million businesses run on Stripe directly or via platforms, and the company shipped over 350 product updates in 2025 alone.
The scale is now enterprise-grade as much as startup-grade: Stripe powers 90% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and 80% of the Nasdaq 100, and 25% of all new Delaware corporations are formed through Stripe Atlas. Net revenue reached an estimated $6.9 billion in 2025 (up roughly 36% from $5.1 billion in 2024, per Sacra, which also estimates ~$1.2B EBITDA), and Stripe has said it remained 'robustly profitable' on an operating basis.
Stripe's market position is that of the developer-favorite incumbent — competing with Adyen and Checkout.com at the enterprise end and PayPal/Braintree and Block at the SMB end — while pushing aggressively into adjacent money-movement, embedded-finance, stablecoin, and agentic-commerce markets. In 2025–26 it backed that strategy with acquisitions: stablecoin platform Bridge (~$1.1B), wallet infrastructure firm Privy, blockchain project Tempo, and usage-based billing leader Metronome (~$1B, closed January 2026).
What does Stripe offer?
A full stack of payments and money-movement products built on developer-first APIs.
- Payments· Core
- Checkout & Payment Links· Core
- Terminal (in-person)· Core
- Billing (subscriptions)· Revenue
- Usage-based billing (Metronome)· Revenue
- Invoicing· Revenue
- Tax· Revenue
- Revenue Recognition· Revenue
- Connect (platforms/marketplaces)· Money movement
- Issuing (card programs)· Money movement
- Treasury (embedded banking)· Money movement
- Capital (financing)· Money movement
- Radar (fraud)· Risk
- Identity· Risk
- Link (checkout wallet)· Consumer
- Stablecoin / crypto payments (Bridge)· Emerging
- Sigma & Data Pipeline· Data
How does Stripe make money?
Stripe makes money primarily by taking a per-transaction cut of payment volume, plus software fees layered on top (Billing, Tax, Radar, Connect, Issuing). It is fundamentally a take-rate business: revenue scales with the dollars flowing through the platform, supplemented by SaaS-style add-on fees.
The headline price for standard online card payments in the US is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction. High-volume merchants move to interchange-plus pricing, where Stripe passes the card networks' actual interchange cost through and adds a fixed margin, which lowers the effective rate at scale. In-person (Terminal) payments are priced lower (around 2.7% + 5¢), and currency conversion and certain payment methods carry additional fees.
The higher-margin growth comes from software attached to the payments: Stripe Billing is priced around 0.5–0.7% of billing volume, Tax around 0.5% per transaction, Radar fraud tooling at a few cents per transaction, Connect at roughly $2/active account plus payout fees, and Identity around $1.50 per verification. For a subscription business the all-in rate after stacking these layers often lands between 4% and 6.5%, well above the 2.9% + 30¢ headline.
Growth is driven by three flywheels: the underlying expansion of internet commerce (more volume on existing customers), upsell of the newer Revenue and Finance Automation suite (on track for a ~$1 billion annual run rate), and a deliberate move upmarket into enterprises that bring very large, durable payment volume. That mix is what took net revenue from an estimated $5.1B in 2024 to ~$6.9B in 2025, with usage-based billing (boosted by the Metronome acquisition) and stablecoin rails as the next legs of growth.
Who leads Stripe?
Stripe is led by co-founder brothers Patrick Collison (CEO) and John Collison (President), with Will Gaybrick as President of Product & Business, Steffan Tomlinson as CFO, and Eileen O'Mara as Chief Revenue Officer. The CTO seat has been unfilled publicly since Rahul Patil left for Anthropic in late 2025.
- Patrick CollisonCo-Founder & CEOSince 2010Sets company and product direction; the public face of Stripe and a prominent voice on technology and economic growth. Also a Meta board director.
- John CollisonCo-Founder & PresidentSince 2010Patrick's younger brother; runs much of the business, go-to-market, partnerships, and Stripe's European operations out of Dublin.
- Will GaybrickPresident, Product & BusinessSince 2015 (former CFO)Joined as CFO from Thrive Capital, where he was a general partner; now leads product and business — effectively Stripe's most senior product executive.
- Steffan TomlinsonChief Financial OfficerSince 2023Prior CFO of Confluent, Google Cloud finance, and Palo Alto Networks; brought in to scale finance toward public-company readiness.
- Eileen O'MaraChief Revenue OfficerCRO since 2023 (joined 2021)Dublin-based; owns Stripe's global go-to-market and enterprise sales motion. Previously led EMEA sales; veteran of Salesforce and Oracle.
- Jeff TittertonChief Marketing OfficerSince 2022Leads global marketing; previously senior roles at Zendesk, Adobe, and 99designs.
How do you contact Stripe's leadership?
Stripe's verified corporate email patterns are firstname@stripe.com and flast@stripe.com (the two most common formats). Stripe does not publish individual executive inboxes, so the addresses below follow that verified pattern rather than being individually published; for official routes use press@stripe.com (media) and support.stripe.com.
patrick@stripe.comHow much funding has Stripe raised?
Stripe has raised roughly $9.4 billion in equity across its venture and growth rounds, plus large secondary tender offers that have repeatedly reset its valuation. The most recent marker is a February 2026 tender offer valuing the company at $159 billion — up from $106.7 billion in September 2025 and $91.5 billion in February 2025.
The early rounds came fast and from marquee names. After a $2M seed in 2011 (Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia, a16z), Stripe raised an $18M Series A in 2012 (~$100M valuation), an $80M Series C in early 2014 led by Founders Fund (~$1.75B), $70M led by Thrive in late 2014 ($3.5B), $100M in 2015 with Visa, Amex, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia ($5B), and a $150M Series D in 2016 led by CapitalG and General Catalyst ($9B).
The hyper-growth rounds followed: a $245M Series E led by Tiger Global in 2018 ($20B), a $100M Series F in early 2019 ($22.5B), a $250M Series G in September 2019 led by Sequoia, General Catalyst, and a16z ($35B), a $600M Series G extension in April 2020 ($36B), a $600M Series H in March 2021 led by Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Sequoia and Ireland's NTMA ($95B peak), and a $6.5B+ Series I in March 2023 — a sharp down round to $50B — co-led by a16z, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD, and Thrive, with GIC, Goldman Sachs, and Temasek joining.
Since 2024 Stripe has chosen tender offers over primary raises to give employees liquidity while staying private: $65B (Feb 2024), $70B (late 2024), $91.5B (Feb 2025), $106.7B (Sep 2025, finally surpassing the 2021 peak), and $159B (Feb 2026) — the latest backed by Thrive Capital, Coatue, and a16z, with Stripe deploying its own cash to repurchase shares.
How did Stripe get here?
From seven lines of code in a Y Combinator batch to a $159B financial-infrastructure platform processing $1.9T a year.
- 2010Founded by the Collison brothersPatrick and John Collison start Stripe (initially '/dev/payments') and join Y Combinator; public launch follows in 2011.
- Mar 2021Series H — $95B valuation$600M round led by Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Sequoia, and Ireland's NTMA makes Stripe the most valuable U.S. startup.
- Mar 2023Series I — $50B (down round)$6.5B+ raised at roughly half the 2021 peak, used mainly to fund employee equity and tax obligations during the fintech reset.
- 2024–25Acquires Bridge & PrivyBuys stablecoin platform Bridge (~$1.1B) and wallet infrastructure firm Privy, anchoring a push into stablecoins and programmable money.
- Oct 2025Opens permanent Dublin HQStripe opens One Wilton Park in Dublin, formalizing a dual-HQ structure with South San Francisco; CTO Rahul Patil departs for Anthropic.
- Sep 2025Tops 2021 peak at $106.7BA tender offer values Stripe above its 2021 high for the first time, after $1.4T in 2024 volume and accelerating AI-driven growth.
- Jan 2026Closes Metronome acquisitionCompletes ~$1B purchase of usage-based billing leader Metronome (powers OpenAI billing) to own metered/usage-based revenue.
- Feb 2026Tender offer at $159BBacked by Thrive, Coatue, and a16z; 2025 volume hits $1.9T (+34%) and stablecoin volume doubles to ~$400B.
Who are Stripe's competitors?
Stripe competes with Adyen and Checkout.com upmarket, PayPal/Braintree and Block downmarket, plus Square and Razorpay in specific segments.
- AdyenPublic Dutch enterprise processor with a single global platform; favored by very large retailers and marketplaces and Stripe's main upmarket rival.
- PayPal / BraintreePayPal owns consumer trust and checkout; its Braintree unit competes directly with Stripe on developer-facing payment APIs.
- Block (Square)Strong in in-person/SMB and Cash App; competes with Stripe Terminal and on small-business payments rather than enterprise APIs.
- Checkout.comEnterprise-focused, API-first global processor competing with Stripe for large international merchants and high-volume accounts.
- RazorpayIndia market leader for payments and business banking; competes with Stripe in fast-growing emerging-market geographies.
- Square (POS)Square's all-in-one POS and payments suite targets the SMB/retail segment where Stripe's Terminal product overlaps.
Stripe — frequently asked questions
