Silicon Valley’s private fintech startup, Stripe is planning operations in Dubai for its first expansion into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), according to the media. This expansion into the Middle East by the online payments company Stripe is the sequel to the latest funding round which upscaled the company to $95 billion. It also made Stripe be the most valuable private fintech firms in the world.
Stripe was started in the year 2010 by two brothers from Ireland. The co-founders Patrick (32) and John Collison (30) are each worth over $11 billion. The company then competed directly with PayPal, Adyen and Square. The software platform of the company allowed businesses to accept payments online.
Matt Henderson, business lead for Europe, Middle East and Africa of Stripe addressed the media and said, “The opportunity for start-ups in the UAE is enormous. It clearly got a booming digital economy and the opportunity for Stripe is very large as well.” Businesses that operate online will now be able to accept online payment. Henderson further added that “There are a lot of great local businesses that haven’t yet globalised. One of the ways that will help them grow and therefore help them to resonate with investors is opening up these new markets.”
E-commerce has been blooming ever since the onset of lockdown measures across the globe due to Covid-19 and the same is the case in UAE. The International Trade Administration has forecasted the value of UAE’s e-commerce market to value $27.1 billion by 2022.
Around $600 million of investment are already put into startups in the UAE by Stripe. It is looking forward to the emerging technology businesses in the country. It is to note that Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and Peter Thiel, a billionaire investor were early investors of Stripe whose worth was more than Uber and Facebook before they went public.