Stripe, which is based in San Francisco and employs 2,000 people, is among a handful of firms that have thrived during lockdown. Since early March, the company has processed more than $1bn (£800m) of payments exclusively for new clients. Estimates from Forbes suggest the company’s revenue could be as high as $3.4bn from processing $200bn worth of transactions. Those figures point to the extraordinary scale at which businesses have been forced into digitising.
Stripe has revelled in facilitating those transformations. By offering what is essentially a one-stop shop for taking payments online, it has found itself perfectly placed to rack up new business during the pandemic. “We take this role that we play in supporting the livelihood of businesses very seriously,” says Henderson.
Stripe’s robustness was demonstrated when it went back to investors in April, during the peak of the pandemic, for a further $600m. The additional raise, which came from existing backers like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia and General Catalyst, bucked the trend of downward valuations that have plagued companies in recent months. The capital valued the business at $36bn.
Will the boom for Stripe last? Lockdown has forced businesses into sizeable changes in how they operate. Some of those, the New Zealander says, will “hopefully” revert to normal. “I think you’ll see a lot of changes to normality and some behaviour, so case in point, I do think that you’ll see a jump in contactless payments as a proportion of the offline economy,” he says. “I also think there are businesses experimenting with new online models that will be forever changed, and it will be users that forever change their behaviour.”
Henderson’s perspective offers a unique insight into the fintech world. Britain is home to some of the biggest names in the sector, including Monzo and Revolut, but risks posed by Brexit and the pandemic could undermine their impressive growth.
Monzo was forced to reduce its valuation in a recent funding round, while Revolut has decided to move the processing of payments out of the UK after Brexit. Despite this, he plays down the impact Brexit will have on the fintech industry. “The most likely scenario is that London continues to be a global centre for tech-driven innovation in financial services,” says Henderson.