Stripe

Stripe is a payment platform: it lets a business accept cards, wallets and other payment methods online, through its own checkout pages, no-code payment links or its APIs.¹ It was founded in Palo Alto, California, according to Wikipedia (a secondary source), whose article gives both 2009 and 2010 as the founding year.³ Today Stripe describes itself as having dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin, being available to businesses in 50+ countries, and handling more than $1.4 trillion in payments for the businesses on it in 2024 (vendor-stated).² For a one-person company it is often the money layer under everything else: the processor behind a storefront, a subscription product or an invoice. It is also where revenue-verification services read their figures, through a read-only “restricted API key” that can do only what its owner allows, as How payment-verified revenue works explains.⁴

Its standard pricing has no setup or monthly fee: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for a domestic card, plus 1.5% for an international card and 1% when currency conversion is needed.¹ On one $50 sale that comes to $1.75, the lowest fee of the 12 platforms in Lowest Fee on One $50 Digital Sale, by Platform. On its own, Stripe is a processor, not a merchant of record, so sales tax and VAT stay with the founder. Stripe Tax Basic calculates and collects tax for 0.5% per transaction on its no-code integrations, or 50¢ per transaction through the API, only where the business is registered to collect; Tax Complete adds registrations and filings, starting at $90 a month on a 1-year contract.⁵ Managed Payments goes further for 3.5% per successful transaction on top of standard processing: Stripe (via Link) becomes the merchant of record and, in supported jurisdictions, handles sales tax, VAT and GST calculation, collection, filing and remittance, plus fraud prevention, dispute responses and transaction-level customer support.⁶

For subscriptions, Stripe Billing costs 0.7% of Billing volume on pay-as-you-go pricing⁷ and works out MRR, churn and subscriber lifetime value on its Billing overview, with the definitions compared in How MRR, Churn and LTV Are Calculated.⁸ Stripe Atlas incorporates a Delaware company for a $500 one-time setup fee, which includes government fees and the first year of registered agent service, then $100 a year for the registered agent; Stripe says the company is incorporated within two business days (vendor-stated).⁹