US based, Stripe, which provides firms a way to embed payments functionality on their sites, has announced that it has emerged from beta testing in the UK and will now be able to accept British Pounds and Euros for the first time. The UK is just the first European market that Stripe has announced it will go live in, with the service still in beta stage in Ireland, France and the Netherlands.
While exciting news, Stripe’s move to the UK will not go unchallenged and the company will face some competition in the UK and across Europe in the form of Paymill among others. German based, Paymill raised $13 million in January of this year and a further $5.3 million in February. Paymill has closely followed Stripe and following changes to Stripe’s service earlier this year, Paymill made similar alterations.
However, one thing that Stripe can claim advantage too is that it has a strong stable of clients including Foursquare and Grooveshark and has made partnerships recently with British accountancy platforms FreeAgent and Kashflow in advance of going live in the UK.
Though international expansion is always a big step and Europe is not without competitors, the move is positive for Stripe and should see it benefit from its decision to extend beyond the US.
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