Brothers Patrick and John Collison, founders of Stripe, one of the fastest growing e-payment platforms on the planet
The Collison brothers’ Stripe has revealed a new sharing economy product for entrepreneurs called Stripe Connect that will enable start-ups to surpass geographic barriers to entry and build the next Hassle or Deliveroo.
The new product is designed to help start-ups that don’t have the benefit of a huge domestic market to enter the global market and be able to scale up fast.
Stripe Connect makes it possible for marketplaces and sharing economy services to access more than 1bn potential buyers and sellers globally, by giving them the instant ability to sign up sellers in any of the 25 countries where Stripe is live.
“Going international is a big challenge for any start-up in Ireland today, and doing that is a question of building on the right infrastructure from an early stage, especially for the most tech-forward platforms,” explained Stripe’s country lead in Ireland, Don O’Leary.
“Stripe Connect gives Irish businesses instant access to a global market of over a billion potential buyers and sellers, helping a new generation of marketplaces and sharing economy achieve international scale faster than ever before.”
Removing the geographic barriers to growth
With Stripe Connect, marketplaces can build their platform once and deploy it in any of the countries where Stripe operates.
Stripe Connect equips marketplaces with a suite of tools that help them accept payments in any currency, and pay out to sellers internationally.
It also lets marketplaces customise almost every aspect of the payments experience for both buyers and sellers – determining when and to whom payments are made, and how much visibility individual buyers and sellers have into the payment process.
The payments infrastructure is future-proofed because it is built on Stripe’s flexible APIs.
Companies can also operate a single global marketplace that sends and receives payments in local currencies where buyers and sellers are located.
Unlocking the sharing economy
Stripe was founded in San Francisco five years ago.
It is a technology platform that developers use to build internet businesses. Hundreds of thousands of businesses – ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies – rely on Stripe’s software tools to securely accept payments, expand globally, and create new revenue streams.
Stripe is now one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the Silicon Valley scene and the company has received investment from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital, Visa and American Express to name a few. The company was valued at $5bn last year after raising close to $100m in an investment round.
In December, Siliconrepublic.com broke the news that Stripe was establishing its new premises at the The One Building on Grand Canal Street in Dublin’s famous Silicon Docks.
