Brothers Patrick and John Collison, both 26, have been called the “Mark Zuckerbergs of Ireland” thanks to the success of their payments startup Stripe. Stripe was founded in 2010 under the name “/dev/payments”. The name resulted in misspellings and confusion to those outside the company, so the company renamed itself Stripe.
Stripe is a US technology company that lets private individuals and businesses to make payments over the Internet. Many large companies prefer Stripe’s accessibility and the simplicity such as Visa, Apple, Facebook, and many other large corporations. This year Stripe has made a large effort to create mobile commerce that will allow retailers to sell directly to consumers on other apps such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
The company is catching fire extremely quickly and is adding thousands of customers every year to their already large supply of customers. As of recently, Stripe made a deal to power ApplePay, and it’s now worth $5 billion. Needless to say, Stripe has become the Paypal of the mobile era.
Personally, I admire the innovation of these two entrepreneurs who looked at an idea such as Paypal and applied it to another needed area. Based on their company’s reports, the company seems relatively optimist about the future claiming that 27% of Americans will have bought something through Stripe in the next year.
They seemed to have largely replaced Paypal. Why is that the case? Did Paypal fail to remain relevant or stay up to date to meet the needs of its customers? More importantly, is Stripe in danger of the same threat in a couple years?
I had never heard of Stripe until I read this! It is very interesting to me how such a saturated market (mobile/online paying services) can still see new companies getting big. I wonder what specifically made them burst on to the scene and take over so many already standing mobile pay methods so quickly! The guys who run it must be brilliant at networking to stand out in such a large market.
It is incredibly to think just how successful these two are. I did a bit of enquiry and found out that Patrick Collison is worth $1.1 billion. This is quite an accomplishment for such a young man. They are examples of great entrepreneurs. They were not just living in the now but they saw a potential opening for a new form of paypal. It is a great lesson that teaches entrepreneurs to be on the lookout for not just problems but improvements.
Businesses that take care of the less visible sides of other companies seem to be some of the most successful. It would make sense that if you know about the needs and niches that aren’t just a new product or new take on a service you can start a business that is both unique and has demand.