Stripe is now enabling bitcoin transactions

20 Feb 2015

Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison’s US$3.5bn Silicon Valley start-up Stripe has begun allowing merchants to use its service to process payments in the form of bitcoins.

Stripe will charge 0.5pc per transaction made via the cryptocurrency.

The company started testing bitcoin integration almost a year ago across 60 countries and completed its trial in December.

Key features of Stripe’s new bitcoin service include an easy API, freedom from exchange rate hassles, transparent pricing and accurate reporting.

Stripe has been on something of a roll recently after winning e-payment integration partnerships with Twitter and Facebook and in recent weeks it emerged Pinterest is working with Stripe to introduce a buy button.

This follows a recent coup that saw Stripe become Kickstarter’s e-payments partner of choice.

Stripe recently received a valuation US$3.5bn after raising US$70m in investment from Thrive Capital along with existing investors Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures.

Patrick and John Collison were recently listed in the Forbes top 30 under 30 people in tech. They formed a start-up called Shuppa in 2007, which later became known as Auctomatic, attracted funding from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Y Combinator, and was acquired just a year later by Canadian firm Live Current Media for $5m (€3.2m) when the brothers were just 17 and 19, respectively.

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

editorial@siliconrepublic.com