The payments processing giant Stripe said Thursday that it would join with some of its investors to buy shares from current and former employees in an offer valued at $91.5 billion, a news release on Stripe's website said.
The valuation is slightly higher than the $85 billion valuation cited by some news outlets, including Bloomberg, which reported on a potential tender offer earlier this month. A Stripe spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was written in the news release. Bloomberg and the tech-focused news outlet The Information reported that the terms of the tender offer could change.
A potential Stripe IPO has been the subject of speculation and news reports for at least two years. CNBC reported in 2023 that the payments processing company — which has dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin — was considering selling shares to the public.
The payments firm offers payment processing and technology to businesses and was founded in 2010.
Co-founders John and Patrick Collison have provided little clarity on their IPO plans in the intervening years, but the company has shown signs that it might start selling shares publicly at some point.
However, analysts and consultants who follow the company think the tender offer to employees signals that Stripe isn't in a hurry to go public.
"Companies sometimes use private share sales as an alternative to going public, especially when market conditions are volatile or when they prefer to maintain operational flexibility," Lin William Cong, a Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business finance professor and founding director of the university's fintech initiative, told Payments Dive last week.
Stripe processed roughly $1.4 trillion in payment volume in 2024, a 38% increase from 2023, the company said in an annual letter published on its website Thursday.
