Online payments provider Stripe has raised $150 million in Series D funding, the company’s largest round to date. With the reported cash infusion, Stripe’s valuation has nearly doubled from $5 billion to $9.2 billion.
CapitalG, the investment arm of Google parent Alphabet, and venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners led the $150 million round, with participation from existing investors including Sequoia Capital. The startup has raised more than $450 million to date.
Money from the round will be used to further invest in international expansion, possible future acquisitions, or the development of new tools and software. Given that Stripe opened its first Asian operation in Singapore in September and currently is beta testing in Japan and Hong Kong, retailers in this region are likely to be affected most by the funding in the short term.
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Major credit card providers Visa and American Express have partnered with Stripe in the past, since its software is designed to enable businesses and app developers to accept credit card payments quickly. By offering its own API, Stripe has come in handy for many SMBs that were not able to implement payment solutions of their own into their web sites or mobile apps. But Stripe also has expanded into numerous other payment services as well, including transaction processing, data storage, accounting and billing.
In a crowded and fractured mobile payments vertical, Stripe aids retail consumers in accepting wallets such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, Alipay and bitcoin.
Stripe is sometimes compared to its better-known competitor Square, but the two payments companies don’t line up in direct competition with one another. Square’s clients are largely brick-and-mortar retailers, whereas Stripe keeps most its focus on e-Commerce brands. But as digital shopping continues to pick up steam, Stripe has an advantage within digital channels in the event Square tries to catch up there. A person familiar with Stripe told The Wall Street Journal that the company is getting close to processing the payment volume of Square, but has yet to surpass it.
In addition to the funding, Stripe secured a credit line of up to $250 million from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Barclays PLC. With the credit facility, Stripe can borrow from the lenders at any time when interest rates are low.
