Stripe was founded in 2010 by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in San Francisco. The brothers started working on Stripe as teenagers, frustrated by how difficult it was to accept payments online. Their first product — seven lines of code to start accepting payments — was a revelation for developers used to dealing with clunky payment APIs.
Today, Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars in payments annually and serves millions of businesses in over 50 countries. Its client list includes Amazon, Google, Shopify, Instacart, and a huge portion of the startup ecosystem. Stripe’s valuation reached $95 billion in 2021 before adjusting to $50 billion, then climbing back to $65 billion in a 2023 funding round.
The product suite has expanded far beyond simple payment processing. Stripe now offers billing and invoicing (Stripe Billing), subscription management, fraud prevention (Radar), banking-as-a-service (Treasury), corporate cards and expense management (Stripe Issuing), identity verification (Stripe Identity), and financial reporting (Stripe Revenue Recognition). Stripe Connect handles marketplace and platform payments.
What keeps developers loyal is the API quality. Stripe’s documentation is considered the gold standard in the industry, and their SDKs are available in every major programming language. The developer experience has been a core competitive advantage from day one. Stripe also launched Stripe Press, a publishing house for books about economic and technological progress. For internet businesses that need to move money, Stripe is often the first and last payment platform they consider.
