The list of partners for Apple Pay shows some very impressive names all in one place—Visa Inc. can be found therein, as can First Data Corp. (News - Alert) But, one company that showed up on the list is one that might not be ordinarily expected, especially given the fact that the company in question is just a five-year-old startup. Specifically, the firm in question is Stripe Inc., and its inclusion on the list is set to bring with it not only value for Apple (News - Alert), but also some further impressive gains for Stripe.
Co-founder Patrick Collison noted that the company was “...hugely excited about the Apple announcement...”, but that “...this is just another step along the way,” showing that the company not only has plans for Apple, but plans beyond that as well. For instance, Stripe was recently spotted working with Alipay, the mobile payments arm of recent IPO darling Alibaba, as well as working with Twitter (News - Alert) on an e-commerce feature. Indeed, the company is now said to be considering an initial public offering (IPO), or may well prove an acquisition target with a $1.75 billion valuation. That's up from $100 million just under two years ago.
While Stripe is making some impressive gains in the overall field, there's plenty of competition waiting in the wings, eager to strike. For instance, there's PayPal, who in recent days has actually been considered for a split off into its own firm, and reports put Google (News - Alert) involved in the field, at least somewhat. Along with that, banks and similar financial firms are moving into the sector, all eager to land a piece of the steadily growing mobile commerce market. Reports suggest that, by 2017, the market in using mobile devices to spend will reach $720 billion, which means plenty of transactions to process and plenty of payments to oversee.
So what's got so many interested in Stripe? A combination of factors, seemingly; not only does Stripe take a comparatively low transaction fee—2.9 percent plus 30 cents of each successful transaction—but it also works with a surprisingly simple code base. Reports suggest that it's actually quite simple to add Stripe to current operations thanks to the relative simplicity of the code under which it operates, taking as little as five minutes to set up and run.
There's a lot to like here in Stripe, and the value of its connections alone is worth considering it further. After all, a company that's drawing the attention of major names must have a lot going for it, and a company like Stripe certainly has the names to deal with. It's about more than the names, of course, because Stripe is showing its value not just in who it knows, but what it does. By all reports, Stripe does what it does extremely well and sufficiently so to make it interesting to a variety of firms. Granted, Stripe also has some big-name competitors with deep pockets to wage marketing warfare like no tomorrow, but Stripe has a great product that's working well already. That's marketing of a type, and a very tough type to beat.
Only time will tell if Stripe can fend off its various competitors and emerge as top dog in the mobile payments field. It may have a lot to face down, but with a great product and satisfied customers to back it, that could be all it needs to make success happen.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
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