As legacy acquirers consolidate, Stripe racks up VC funds

Just five months after first reaching a $20 billion valuation, Stripe has attracted another $100 million investment that's put it past $22.5 billion, allowing the fintech to put even more pressure on the legacy acquiring industry.

The fresh infusion comes from Tiger Global Management, which was also part of a $245 million round in September that pushed Stripe over the $20 billion valuation plateau. Stripe confirmed the investment, which was first reported by The Information, but did not comment further.

These milestones mark Stripe's rise from a fintech that supported small-business e-commerce sites to a diverse merchant acquirer that counts Google and Uber among its clients.

That has given Stripe access to Google's array of advertising tools and a venue to collaborate with Uber as the ride-sharing app adds financial services and huge partnerships of its own, including Venmo and Starbucks.

That expansion comes as Stripe counters PayPal and Square by plotting a deeper move into financial services such as lending and more traditional merchant hardware to bridge the channel gap between online sales and brick-and-mortar commerce.

Stripe is picking up more investment as it and other newer, more nimble merchant fintechs with lower overhead spark a round of consolidation among incumbent merchant acquirers.

Fiserv recently agreed to pay $22 billion to acquire First Data to round out a menu of core banking, merchant technology and payment processing — a move that's likely to spur more deals among payment processors and point of sale hardware companies.