Many investors are waiting, with great interest, for Stripe's IPO, which Inc.com has ranked among the top 12 most influential start-ups of the past decade.
Today, it caters to thousands of customers around the world, both small startups and giants, which include Lyft, Target,Zoom, Just Eat, NBC Media Group, and Salesforce.
In September 2019, the latest investment round brought the company $600M. Stripe did not raise any more third-party funds.
In April 2020, the company was valued at only $36 billion, however, in 2021 the figure rose to $95 billion. In total, the company managed to raise $2 billion in investments in all investment rounds. One of Stripe's investors was Elon Musk.
In 2021, Stripe launched revenue recognition to simplify accounting and to automate bookkeeping, it also acquired Recko which helps businesses automatically reconcile payments. It also expanded the number of payment terminals across Europe.
Meanwhile, the Collinson brothers' fortune is around $4.30B, they being among the top 10 youngest billionaires, as reported by Forbes USA.
According to some experts, after the IPO, the company may get worth anything from $45B to $100B. Despite the already far-reaching goal, the company still has some room for growth. Thus, in 2020, Stripe acquired Paystack, a Nigeria based payment service provider, the acquisition deal being worth $200M.
Stripe official IPO date has not been officially announced yet. There have been rumors on the company getting ready for an IPO since 2019, although the Collinson brothers do not confirm them. However, given the successful last year, many expect the IPO to get launched in 2022.
During the pandemic in 2020, the focus of Stripe entrepreneurs shifted even more towards online commerce. According to what the Collinsons say, companies that joined Stripe in March 2020 earned a total of $1B in just six weeks.
The target market for Stripe is quite large, too, as only 10% of commerce was based online two years ago, Forbes reports. Meanwhile, the Collinsons affirm that, with COVID-19, both businesses and shoppers are switching to the digital environment in a very short term. With a convenient, easy to use, and affordable service, such as Stripe, this migration can be a piece of cake.
Stripe does have competition, and this only proves its yield potential, as Square, PayPal, and Ayden rallied last year by 200% or 300%.
