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Stripe Issuing allows businesses to create payment cards for managing expenses from customers and staff.
Fresh off its $600m funding round, Stripe has begun rolling out its card issuing services for businesses in Europe.
Stripe Issuing allows businesses to issue and manage virtual or physical payments cards and it is now being launched in 20 European markets, including Ireland. The service is already up and running in the US where it has processed “billions of dollars” in its first year, according to the company.
These cards can be used by businesses’ employees or their customers with controls on spending limits and blocks on certain merchants or expenses. Integrating with Stripe Dashboard, businesses have an overview of how and where the cards are being used.
In one example, a car rental company can issue a card to a driver to cover fuel costs on a trip.
“Creating and distributing new cards in Europe has long been so complex and opaque that only a handful of companies could ever justify doing it,” Matt Henderson, Stripe business lead for EMEA, said.
“Today, we’re making it fast, simple and secure. It used to take months to create and ship new cards in Europe,” he said. “With Stripe Issuing, it now takes two days. We’ve been astonished by the breadth of use cases businesses in the US have found for our Issuing infrastructure, and can’t wait to see what our European users build with it.”
Klarna, Uber-owned Cornershop and Ramp, a fintech start-up that Stripe recently invested in, are among the customers of Stripe Issuing.
Stripe raised $600m in March in a deal that valued company founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison at $95bn. As part of expansion plans, the company said it would be hiring 1,000 people in its Dublin headquarters to support growth in the EMEA market.
Weeks later, the company confirmed the opening of a Dubai office in a bid to move deeper into the Middle East region.
