Stripe Swipes Its Expansion Plans Across Europe

Stripe, the digital payments company, has its sights on global ambitions as it looks to soon launch in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, the International Business Times reported yesterday (June 15).

John Collison, Stripe’s co-founder, recently spoke at MoneyConf in Belfast, Ireland, about the company’s plans to launch in those countries, which will expand the company’s presence to a total of 20 countries. Collison focused his remarks at the conference about social commerce and Stripe’s focus on converting mobile conversion to mobile commerce, which he noted has been slow across the industry.

“Social commerce is so new that we don’t have a hip abbreviation for it yet,” he said at the conference.

Since social commerce hasn’t quite caught on as a widespread payment option with retailers, the conversations are still focused on helping retailers turn mobile browsers into buyers, as Collison said he has spoken to many retailers who have failed to turn mobile traffic into mobile conversions.

Recent reports indicate that Stripe is looking to raise $500 million, but that amount was not confirmed by the company. Among the most recent product in Stripe’s arsenal is Stripe Connect, which has acted as a payment processor for smaller companies and also as a springboard for the respective Twitter and Facebook Buy buttons. In March, the company rolled out a one-click platform which allows payments across both computers and mobile devices. After inputting card information, users are assigned an SMS code that allows payments across hardware and different sites.

Collison also spoke about the company’s valuation, which is reportedly at $3.5 billion.

“Valuation is the only metric people hear about; it ends up being used as a scoreboard. In fact the cost of capital is just one metric to consider. We say don’t be too evaluation focused. We could mention the number of customers we have. Or how satisfied our customers are. Valuation is the only metric the press ever see,” Collison said at the conference.

Pinterest has also pulled in Stripe for payments, but is also working with Braintree and Apple for payment options that help avoid Pinterest having to have access to payment card details. Stripe also recently partnered with Apple Pay.

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