Irish-founded fintech Stripe has seen its valuation climb to $106.7 billion (€90.8 billion), sources said, passing the company’s previous peak of $95 billion in 2021.
The valuation was first reported by Axios. A representative from Stripe did not comment on the reports.
Long one of the most valuable private fintech companies, Stripe was pegged at $91.5 billion earlier this year, when it said it had reached agreement with investors to allow it buy shares from current and former staff.
Stripe, cofounded by brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, has built an extensive payments infrastructure for companies and handles billions of dollars in transactions each year. In its latest update, the company said businesses generated $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up 38 per cent year-on-year.
Last year it was valued at $70 billion, when Sequoia Capital offered to buy shares from investors looking to cash out of the fintech.
[ Stripe sees revenues at Irish unit surge 34% to $5.12bnOpens in new window ]
Now, it is reportedly in talks to buy back shares from venture capital firms which have invested in the payments company at the new valuation.
The fresh valuation is more than double the $50 billion that the firm was deemed worth when it raised $6.5 billion in 2023, at a time when the wider tech sector was grappling with a downturn.
The company has not yet decided how many shares it plans to buyback or if the offer will ultimately be extended to staff, rather than restricted to only venture capital firms or other institutional investors.
Like firms including Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, Stripe has opted to remain private as its valuation soared, much to the chagrin of retail investors who have been forced to watch its growth from the sidelines.
Company president John Collison has said on several occasions that there were no immediate plans for an initial public offering (IPO) despite ongoing speculation the company would go public. Speaking to The Irish Times earlier this year, he said it would be an “opt-in” project. “Stripe is a profitable business and we intend to run it that way for a long time,” he said.
The company was initially set up to make it easier for developers to accept payments online. Its products now include fraud prevention, invoices and billing, in-person payments and global payouts. In addition to its direct-payments operation, Stripe has also recently been investing in stablecoin technology.
The company’s support of stablecoins follows its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge earlier this year. A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to the value of a currency, such as the US dollar, and can be faster and cheaper to move money internationally.
Stripe began expanding the use of stablecoins earlier this year, bringing it to more than 100 new markets to allow customers to hold funds and make payments internationally more easily.
It now counts some of the biggest names in the world among its client list, from Ford and Hertz and Amazon to Zoom. Stripe has also captured a decent share of the artificial intelligence (AI) market, with OpenAI, Leonardo and Moonbeam among its customers.
--Additional reporting: Bloomberg
