History of Stripe

Founded in Palo Alto, California, in 2010, Stripe was first established by John and Patrick Collison, two Irish business brothers who now hold the positions of president and chief executive officer, respectively. In 2011, the startup was given a total investment of $2 million, which included donations from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, the creator of PayPal, Irish entrepreneur Liam Casey, and venture capital companies Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and SV Angel.

Starting in March of 2013, Stripe made its first purchase, which was Kickoff, an application that combines chat and task management. Moving from Palo Alto to San Francisco was the company's decision in the year 2012.

The firm made the announcement in October 2019 that it will be relocating all of its operations from the South of Market neighborhood to Oyster Point, which is located in the neighboring city of South San Francisco, in the year 2021.The appointment of Mark Carney, who had previously served as Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, to the board of directors of the corporation took place in February of 2021.

In October of 2021, Stripe completed the acquisition of the accounting platform Recko, whose solution was intended to be integrated to the current range of financial tools that Stripe had.

Stripe agreed up a collaboration with Ford Motor Company in January 2022, which will last for a period of five years. As part of this agreement, Stripe will be responsible for handling transactions involving customer car orders and reservations.Additionally, during the same month, Stripe formed a partnership with Spotify to assist content producers in monetizing subscriptions, accepting payments, and launching recurring income streams.

Twitter made the announcement in April 2022 that it would be collaborating with Stripe Inc., a digital payments processor, to explore the possibility of implementing cryptocurrency compensation for a select group of users on the site. "The crypto payments will be routed through Stripe Connect, which will also handle KYC requirements" , Stripe said in its announcement. After making the announcement, the firm said that it intended to include payment options in more cryptocurrencies in the near future.

Stripe made the announcement of its strategic alliance with ION, a global financial technology business, in April of 2022.The company's suggested value dropped from $95 billion to $74 billion, according to a report that was published in the Wall Street Journal in July 2022.

The company's internal share price had decreased. It was stated in November 2022 that the corporation planned to begin layoffs, which would result in the termination of around 14% of its personnel.

The firm made a series of announcements about significant corporate clients over the years 2022 and 2023. These customers included Airbnb, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, BMW, Maersk, Zara, Lotus, Alaska Airlines, Le Monde, and Toyota at various points in time. Additionally, the business made the announcement in March 2023 that OpenAI is collaborating with Stripe to bring its generative artificial intelligence technology to market.

The letters of layoff were issued out to roughly 300 employees by Stripe in January 2025. The majority of the positions affected were in the Product, Operations, and Engineering departments.

When the corporation delivered a cartoon image of a duck to the workers who had been laid off, the company found itself embroiled in a scandal. After some time had passed, Stripe's Chief People Officer, Rob McIntosh, expressed his regret for the error.