Company profile
- Industry
- Financial technology
- Founded
- 2010
- Ownership
- Privately held
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
Decisions on record
2 verified Decision Records on Stripe, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | What Stripe chose | Where it stood | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | The Money Machine | Run private tender offers | As of June 2026 no S-1 has been filed with the SEC (2026-06) | Read the story → | The Money Machine Casebook → |
| 2026 | Moat Anatomy | Bid to acquire PayPal | Too early to call | Read the story → | Moat Anatomy Casebook → |
Run one of these yourself
The decisions Stripe faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
Moat & CompetitionThe Moat AnatomyWhat would it actually cost a challenger to take your customer?See the pack →Business ModelThe Money MachineWhere does the money actually come from, and who sets the rate it comes in at?See the pack →Growth & PortfolioThe Distribution RebellionHow much of the channel's margin do you actually keep?See the pack →
The analyses
Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
Stripe Already Beat PayPal. Bidding $53 Billion to Buy It Anyway Is a Bet Against Visa.
On July 15, 2026, Stripe and Advent International offered about $53 billion for PayPal — $60.50 a share, a 28% premium, backed by roughly $50 billion of committed debt. It would be the largest fintech acquisition ever. The obvious read is that Stripe is buying a fading rival for market share. That read is wrong. Stripe already beat PayPal at what they both do — and the real target isn't PayPal at all. It's the toll Visa and Mastercard take on every swipe.
8 min
The Money Machine · Business Model
Stripe Keeps 40 Cents on a Hundred Dollars. That's Not the Business — It's the Doorway.
Everyone reads Stripe's '2.9% + $0.30' and assumes it pockets ~3% of every sale. It doesn't. After interchange and network fees, Stripe keeps roughly 0.40% — about 40 basis points. The fat margin lives in everything it sells on top of the rail.
8 min
The Money Machine · Business Model
Stripe Could Have IPO'd Years Ago. It Built a Private Liquidity Machine Instead.
Stripe processed $1.4 trillion in 2024 and turned a $101.9M pre-tax profit. The obvious next step is an IPO. Instead it runs a tender-offer flywheel - hitting a $159 billion valuation in 2026 - and never files an S-1. The 'staying private' story is a capital-markets arbitrage, not IPO-shyness.
8 min
The Distribution Rebellion · Boundaries of the Firm
Stripe Sold to the One Person Who Couldn't Sign the Check
Every payments company before Stripe pitched the CFO. Stripe pitched the engineer who'd never been asked. That inversion turned an overlooked API layer into a company valued at $159 billion by 2026 — moving $1.4 trillion in 2024 alone.
8 min