Stripe cofounder John Collison says company may allow staff to cash in on shares again

Limerick-born Collison, who founded the jointly-headquartered Irish-American company with brother Patrick in 2010, said that the move is merely a repetition of what it has done in recent times.

“We did that last year, we did that this year, and we’ll probably do it again in the future,” he told Bloomberg Television.

To fund it may require further cash from the company’s existing investors, as Stripe has done before.

The cash-out mechanism is seen as a way of rewarding employees in an industry where stock options are considered a valuable part of staff incentives.

Unlike publicly-quoted companies, Stripe’s private status means that trading shares is less straight-forward.

Collison also said that despite intense speculation about a possible stock market flotation, the company is no rush to trigger an IPO.

He said that many companies make the decision to go public too early.

“We still see tons of opportunity to change and grow the business quite a lot,” he said. Instead of focusing on an IPO, Collison said he remains focused on products.

Stripe was founded in San Francisco where the firm’s biggest base is. However, it counts its Dublin offices as a joint headquarters.

Stripe is currently valued at $65bn (€60.5bn), a rise on its immediately-previous valuation of $50bn (€46.6bn) but below its high valuation of $95bn (€88.5bn) in 2022.

It processed payments in excess of $1 trillion (€930bn) last year as online payments continued to grow.

The payments company, which is competition with rivals such as Adye, Braintree and PayPal, has a regular pipeline of deals with retail and commercial brands.

Earlier this month, it announced that the hotel group Accor had chosen Stripe as a payment provider. In Ireland, that includes hotel properties such as the 5-star Carton House and the Ibis, Dublin.

In the US, Stripe also offers a range of financial products and services, including business loans, corporate credit cards and fraud prevention.