Twelve-year-old payments giant Stripe is the poster child for fintech companies in many ways. Valued at US$95 billion in March 2021, Stripe made its mark providing payments infrastructure to online businesses and taking a small cut for its services. Such is its importance globally that the Stripe is a 3% tax on future of internet.
While the firm’s internal valuation recently dropped to US$74 billion, it still is the fifth-most valuable startup in the world. Given all its global success and firepower, one would assume that expanding into India would be relatively straightforward for Stripe.
On the contrary, India remains a challenging - albeit important market for the company. For instance, when India’s banking regulator decreed that companies must store user data locally and gave them six months to comply, Stripe took eighteen. This meant that it wasn’t allowed to offer services for Rupay cards or UPI payments. And that’s a big miss in a country where over 65% of the payments flow through UPI.
Despite facing policy hurdles and steep competition when it comes to prices from rivals like Razorpay and PayU, Stripe shows no inclination to throw in the towel. India was among the first countries Stripe hired local talent for and it currently has a workforce of 30 people in the country. Just recently, it became the first foreign company to be awarded an account aggregator license from the central bank.
The MMS looks at how Stripe may have fumbled its early footing in India but it’s still not out of the race.
