Stripe Founders Become Youngest Irish Billionaires

The brothers who co-founded online payments service Stripe have become Ireland’s youngest billionaires after a $150 million funding round valued the business at $9 billion, according to Bloomberg. Patrick and John Collison own about 29 percent of the business, based on an analysis of filings by private stock market Equidate. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index net worth calculation splits the founder ownership pool equally between the two, giving them each a $1.1 billion stake.

The startup’s surging valuation is based on its latest funding round disclosed Nov. 25, putting Patrick, 28, and his younger brother John among the likes of Snap Inc. co-founder Evan Spiegel and Uber Inc.’s Travis Kalanick in amassing a ten-figure fortune from a unicorn, a closely held startup valued at $1 billion or more. Ireland’s youngest billionaires are decades younger than established moguls such as telecoms tycoon Denis O’Brien, 58, or financier Dermot Desmond, 66.

Stripe provides software that lets businesses accept payments online, from sources including credit cards and bitcoin as well as mobile services such as Android Pay and Apple Pay. It also provides tools to help with data security, fraud prevention, accounting and billing. Founded in 2010 offering mobile payments tools for developers, Stripe’s first clients were small U.S. technology companies. It’s since become a competitor to digital payments giant PayPal, with clients that include Facebook, Target and Macy’s.

The latest funding round represented the sale of about 1.6 percent of the company and has made the business twice as valuable as Square, a mobile payments firm that went public a year ago and trades at almost three times revenue. The value of the brothers’ stakes is reduced by 15 percent in the analysis to account for the small stake sold and typical discounts that shares in similar startups attract on the secondary market.