Visa Partners with Stripe to Expand E-Commerce Reach (July 30, 2015)
Visa Inc. this week announced a new partnership with and investment in Stripe, a startup specializing in mobile and online payments technology, to work on new approaches to online payments and increasingly popular “buy buttons.” Visa said Stripe will be one of the first companies to offer its developer community access to Visa’s payment and risk management services through APIs and SDKs, making it easier for e-commerce Website developers to integrate Visa’s digital commerce services, including its tokenization and security technologies. Stripe, in turn, plans to leverage Visa’s global reach to accelerate its own international expansion through Visa’s broad network of acquiring and issuing partners, especially in emerging markets. Visa said it’s making a “strategic investment” in Stripe but did not disclose the sum.
Observers view the move as an opportunity for Visa speed its acceptance at millions of smaller e-commerce sites that often have limited payment options. One of the keys to PayPal’s growth has been providing streamlined payment options to small online businesses and startups. PayPal’s growth rate in this area surged following its 2013 purchase of Braintree, which provides back-end e-commerce and payment services to a large community of developers.
San Francisco-based Stripe, which launched in the fall of 2011, got its start by providing e-commerce payment services to small and midsize e-commerce companies. It charges merchants 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction, with deeper discounts for higher volumes. Stripe also serves larger companies including Twitter, Shopify and Lyft. American Express, also a Stripe investor, earlier this month said it’s working with Stripe to encourage online merchants already using Stripe’s platform to add its own one-touch checkout button. Since its launch, Stripe has scored several rounds of funding, including $70 million last year from investors including Sequoia Capital. The company now is valued at about $5 billion, analysts estimate.
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