Company of the Month January 2021: Stripe leads $35 million funding round for start-up Check

Pictured from left to right: John and Patrick Collison

The Business & Finance Company of the Month for January 2021 is Stripe

Stripe is the Business & Finance Company of the Month for January 2021. The technology company that specialises in building economic infrastructure for the internet has continued its run of investments by leading a $35 million (€28.9 million) funding round for a payroll infrastructure start-up called Check.

Stripe, which makes software used by businesses of every size, from startups to public companies, to manage their businesses online, was launched in 2011 by the Collison brothers, Patrick and John. Patrick had been the recipient, aged 16, of the 41st Young Scientist of the Year for this work with Lisp. He went on to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His brother John achieved the highest Leaving Certificate scores to date and went on to study an undergraduate at Harvard University, Boston.

Now, the company they founded has over 2,500 employees in 14 offices across the globe and has dual headquarters in Dublin and San Francisco as well as offices in London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, amongst others.

This latest round of funding comes after Stripe led an investment of $102 million in a US online checkout company called Fast. Stripe has also invested in a number of other start-ups including PayMongo, Monzo, Step and Stedi. Late last year, the company has bought Paystack, a Nigerian start-up and Irish company Touchtech Payments the previous year.