Stripe available to Irish firms

A global credit card payment service founded by two young Irish millionaire brothers is to be made available to Irish firms from today.

Stripe was founded by Limerick natives Patrick and John Collison in 2010. Its goal was to make it easier to build a business on the internet.

Since then, it has grown rapidly and is now processing millions of euros worth of transactions for large web companies including Reddit, Grooveshark, and Foursquare.

Stripe’s promoters say it is the quickest and easiest way to accept card payments on websites and mobile apps.

Earlier this month, the business was launched in Britain. It is also available in the US and Canada.

The company attracted investors including PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Elon Musk, and venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz.

Earlier this year, Patrick and John Collison were named in The Sunday Times’s Irish Rich List with a €59m holding in Stripe.

Just over five years ago, the brothers shared a €3m windfall after they sold their fledgling internet firm, Auctomatic.

After selling Auctomatic Patrick Collison became director of engineering at Live Current Media. He went on to study mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John Collison chose Harvard, where he studied psychology.