The funding announcement came over the weekend.

Stripe, the global payments major founded by the Collison brothers, said on Sunday that it closed on a $600 million funding round at a valuation of $95 billion. Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Sequoia Capital, and Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) invested in the round. (Stripe)

In September 2019, the fintech startup was valued at $35 billion.

The current valuation, according to the FT, makes the company the most valuable private company Silicon Valley has produced.

It topped pre-IPO tags of Facebook’s (NASDAQ: FB) $80 billion as well as that of Uber (NYSE: UBER) of $72 billion.

Major European expansion in Stripe’s crosshairs

Stripe said it will use the money to meet the “surging” demand for its services from enterprise “heavyweights” in Europe and expand its European operations.

Established companies such as Axel Springer, Jaguar Land Rover, Maersk, Metro, Mountain Warehouse, and Waitrose are already on board Stripe.

The fintech also counts European “hypergrowth” companies such as Deliveroo (UK), Doctolib (France), Glofox (Ireland), Klarna (Sweden), ManoMano (France), N26 (Germany), UiPath (Romania), and Vinted (Lithuania) amongst its customers.

Enterprise revenue is now both Stripe’s largest and fastest-growing segment, more than doubling year over year.

“We’re investing a ton more in Europe this year, particularly in Ireland,” said John Collison, President and co-founder. “Whether in fintech, mobility, retail or SaaS, the growth opportunity for the European digital economy is immense.”

Conor O’Kelly, CEO of NTMA, described the payments giant as an accelerator of global economic growth and a leader in sustainable finance, and said that “most of Stripe’s success is yet to come.”

Payments infrastructure

Stripe will also invest in its Irish co-headquarters in Dublin, as well as beef up its Global Payments and Treasury Network.

The firm’s Global Payments and Treasury Network is a programmable infrastructure for moving money across the world, and the company intends to make it future-ready to power internet commerce in 2030 and beyond.

“The pandemic taught us many things about society, including how much can be achieved—and paid for—online, but the internet still isn’t the engine for global economic progress that it could be,” observed Dhivya Suryadevara, Stripe’s Chief Financial Officer.

Stripe said it intends to soon expand to reach millions of more businesses in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the UAE.

Echoing O’Kelly’s words, Suryadevara said: “While it already processes hundreds of billions of dollars per year for millions of businesses worldwide, the opportunity ahead is much larger for Stripe than it was when the company was started 10 years ago.”

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