San Francisco Startup Recognised By Apple Pay

Stripe, the San Francisco-based online payments startup, has been included on the list of partners for new pay service Apple Pay, alongside the likes of Visa.

The company will enable Apple Pay to work with mobile applications alongside a variety of its bigger competitors. It's the latest coup for the five-year-old startup that is already reportedly working on an e-commerce feature for Twitter.

Patrick Collison, the co-founder of Stripe said, "We're hugely excited about the Apple announcement, but this is just another step along the way." Collison, 26, set up the company with his brother John, 24, in 2009.

The potential opportunity for profits is enormous, with global e-commerce spending via mobile technology expected to reach $720 billion (£441 billion) in 2017, according to IDC, up from $300 billion (£184 billion) this year.

In another recent sign of the company's fast growth, it landed a $1.75 billion (£1.07 billion) valuation this year, up from $100 million (£61 million) less than two years ago.

Stripe lets businesses process credit-card payments in 139 different currencies, and enables bank transfers, Bitcoin and Alipay transfers in less than five minutes.

The company typically takes a 2.9 per cent fee and 30 cents (18p) of each successful transaction.

Stripe currently employs 160 people at its San Francisco office, and has the investment backing of PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin, amongst others.