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Patrick Collison said by acquiring the start-up, which makes selling digital products easy peasy, Stripe will be able to ‘scale merchant of record selling in a big way’.
Stripe has acquired competitor Lemon Squeezy, a US-based payments processing start-up founded four years ago.
Headquartered in Salt Lake City in the US state of Utah, Lemon Squeezy pitches itself as an all-in-one platform for SaaS companies to simplify tasks such as payments, subscriptions, global tax compliance, fraud prevention, among other things. It was founded by friends JR Farr, Gilbert Pellegrom and Orman Clark.
Farr, serial entrepreneur and CEO of the company, noted in the acquisition announcement that Lemon Squeezy surpassed $1m in annual recurring revenue within the first nine months of its public launch during the pandemic, and has “never looked back” since.
“Along the way, we received many acquisition offers and Series A term sheets from investors. But despite the allure of these opportunities, we knew that what we had built was truly special and needed the right partner to take it to the next level,” Farr wrote.
“We’re proud to say that we’ve found that partner in Stripe and have gone from idea to acquisition in under three years.” Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Lemon Squeezy has been processing payments on Stripe since its inception. Farr said that the latest acquisition marks the culmination of “years of effort” and celebrates the “close partnership” and “shared sense of purpose” between the two companies.
“When we began discussions about a potential acquisition, it was immediately apparent that our values and mission were perfectly aligned. Going forward, our mission remains the same: make selling digital products easy-peasy,” he said.
“With Stripe’s help, we’ll continue to improve the merchant-of-record offering, bolstering billing support, building an even more intuitive customer experience, and more.”
Stripe, founded by Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison, does not make acquisitions often. Following the announcement, Patrick Collison welcomed Lemon Squeezy to the team on X and said: “We’re going to scale merchant of record selling in a big way.”
The company was recently valued at around $70bn when venture capital firm Sequoia Capital offered to buy shares from the fintech’s investors earlier this month. Stripe was valued at $95bn back in 2021 but saw this slashed to $50bn a year ago. Since then, its valuation has been steadily rising.
The company dually headquartered in Dublin and San Francisco recently made a major change to its business by allowing customers to use some of its services without needing to be a client of its main payments platform. It also shared plans in April to slowly bring back crypto payments as part of its services after a six-year hiatus.
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