Stripe's Global Flexibility Fuels Kickstarter's Expansion

Kickstarter is rapidly adding countries, which makes Stripe's increasingly international technology tools a good fit, according to the crowdfunding service.

“Stripe's simplicity and increasing global coverage made them a good fit as we grew,” said Andrew Boyajian, director of international and payments at Kickstarter, which is headquartered in Brooklyn but serves users that can benefit from having funding sources in as many countries as possible.

Kickstarter initially switched from Amazon Payments to Stripe at the beginning of the year because Amazon discontinued the service Kickstarter was using, but has since found Stripe's international acumen attractive as crowdfunding becomes popular all over the world.

This spring, Kickstarter launched its service in France, Germany and Spain. On June 16, the crowdfunding platform added five more countries: Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Belgium and Italy.

Merchants can reach customers in more than 20 countries through Stripe, which recently added the Nordics to the list of countries its merchants can sell into. To meet the demand of the growing number of U.S. companies pursuing e-commerce in Asia, Stripe is running a private beta operation in Japan, and will likely open accessibility to other countries in the area soon. 

Stripe is also expanding the payment methods it supports. Stripe, which was valued at $3.5 billion in December, partnered with Apple for the release of its mobile payment system, Apple Pay. And the company is one of a few Alipay partners as the Chinese online payment service looks to build relationships with U.S. companies. Stripe was also one of the early adopters of Bitcoin, enabling its clients to accept the cryptocurrency for payment.

“Payment behaviors differ around the world,” said Boyajian. “But Stripe acts as a single touchpoint, supporting different payment methods seamlessly and allowing a more localized approach to payments."

Stripe, through Stripe Connect "integrates payments in a very deep way. It allows for international expansion, gives [merchants] a lot of control and future proofs these businesses," said Billy Alvarado, business development and financial operations at Stripe. "Stripe enables [merchants] to go global with a simple integration."

"We have a very broad view of expansion," Alvarado added. The company targets new markets based on the location of its users—and the location of its users' customers.

Plus Stripe's platform is built for developers, giving businesses the ability to build customized user experiences, which can be built quickly since Stripe handles the complexity of payments.

"Online transactions are becoming a technology game," said Alvarado. "But companies that build the best experiences will drive disruption."

Stripe has done especially well powering payments for social media sites. The company has deals with Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

While Stripe doesn't share the exact number of merchants using Stripe Connect., the company has said it processes billions of dollars in payments and works with tens of thousands of merchants.

"Stripe is working with an online market that only represents about 5% of the total transactions happening online right now," Alvarado said. But it's got its sights set on increasing that percent by multiples in the future, he said.