The pandemic threatened Stripe Inc. to hide. Instead, the company got a turbocharger.
Stripe processes payments for ecommerce businesses and keeps a small portion of each purchase in consideration for its services. When home orders early in the pandemic caused spending to drop and refund requests skyrocketing, the outlook was not great.
Then everything went online. More than 500,000 doctor’s offices, farmers’ markets, and other businesses migrated to online payments and used Stripe to do so. While people trained at home, redecorated or both, Stripe clients like Peloton Interactive Inc. and Wayfair Inc.
Stripe’s revenue rose nearly 70% last year to about $ 7.4 billion, according to people with knowledge of the company’s finances. Other startups may have more flashy apps or more famous brands, but Stripe showed that being a workhorse is better than a show pony.
Now sitting on top of a $ 95 billion valuation – the highest for a privately-owned Silicon Valley company, according to data company PitchBook – Stripe is piling up overseas, getting ready to go public and work on construction. of a one-stop financial supermarket for the internet economy.