Collison brothers’ Stripe e-payments platform goes live in UK

15 Aug 2013

Patrick and John Collison

After beta testing the technology in Ireland, the UK has become the next country in which the Collison brothers’ Stripe has gone live. Businesses in the UK can now process card payments via their websites in sterling, euros and US dollars.

Stripe’s UK country manager Andy Young says the service supports all major card types, including American Express.

UK pricing starts at 2.4pc plus stg£0.20 per transaction, plus VAT. Volume pricing is available for businesses at scale.

“We’re continuing to work on bringing Stripe to more businesses worldwide,” Young said in the Stripe blog.

“We’ve opened an engineering office in London – our bet is that global presence will make Stripe better for everyone.”

In recent months, Stripe began offering its payments technology to Irish businesses as part of a beta programme and we reported this week that Drogheda web design firm MOR Solutions was the first in Ireland to deploy Stripe’s payment technology upon its platform.

Stripe is an online payments engine built by John and Patrick Collison that simplifies the purchase of content and goods on websites.

The company raised its first round of funding of US$2m in March 2011 from investment veterans Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital and Andreesen Horowitz. This was followed by a further funding round of US$18m in February 2012 by Sequoia Capital that at the time valued Stripe at US$100m.

A report in May last year by SecondMarket.com listed Stripe as ranking alongside Pinterest as one of Silicon Valley’s rising stars, giving it an informal valuation of US$1bn.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com