6 ms·

PayPal's current market cap is ~$80B. Is Stripe actually worth only $6B less than PayPal?

nowherebeen 4y ago
That’s a good question. People in tech all know Stripe, but outside this circle, PayPal and even Square have far superior brand recognition. If you ask my family members what Stripe is, they would shrug.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  I suppose you're technically correct (the best kind of correct ;) but I am not so sure that the brand-recognition metric is the best one to apply to Stripe. PayPal and Square both have a strong B2C presence. PayPal has B2C offerings focused around sending/receiving money. Square, while they don't have a strong B2C product, does spend a lot of time sticking their logo in your face every time you go to a merchant that uses Square. By contrast, Stripe is an infrastructure company. The best parallel I can think of might be a company like Maersk (one of the world's largest container-shipping companies). Sure, you may not recognize the name if you're not in the space, but odds are that they do affect your day-to-day life as a consumer.
  - nowherebeen 4y ago
    I would define Stripe as B2B2C. It’s not simply a B2B because they help business charge customers. Their value is convincing business to use their platform. Most businesses will choose payment gateways that their customers use. And by far the number 1 request from customers is usually PayPal. They might be invisible to the customer, but business will alway prefer to integrate with payment gateways that will get customers to say yes faster. It’s nuanced, but that has just been my experience. Logically you are correct though, on the surface, brand recognition should not matter.
    - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
      > I would define Stripe as B2B2C. I agree; this is more accurate. > And by far the number 1 request from customers is usually PayPal. Do you have any data on this? I'm genuinely curious. Not only do I have a long list of negative experiences with PayPal that skew my own take, but I also have no idea where to look for this kind of industry-wide data on B2B2C customer-demand.
      - nowherebeen 4y ago
        I don’t. But I used to run a Yoga platform and used Stripe. None of my customers (Yoga instructors) knew about Stripe. They always requested PayPal or Square to the point, I realized using Stripe only made my life easier, but my customers didn’t care. It was a huge hassle to convince them a) to use my platform and b) to use Stripe. So it became 2x more difficult to onboard them. Same thing for their customers. Since I was a new platform, they ask their instructors why it wasn’t PayPal or Square. They trusted those brands to hand over their card.
  - peanuty1 4y ago
    > Square, while they don't have a strong B2C product Huh? Block (formerly Square) has an incredibly strong B2C product (the #1 finance app on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store in the US) called Cash App (formerly Square Cash).
    - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
      You are right. My mistake; I don't use that app, and I'd totally forgotten about it.

That’s a good question. People in tech all know Stripe, but outside this circle, PayPal and even Square have far superior brand recognition. If you ask my family members what Stripe is, they would shrug.

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
I suppose you're technically correct (the best kind of correct ;) but I am not so sure that the brand-recognition metric is the best one to apply to Stripe. PayPal and Square both have a strong B2C presence. PayPal has B2C offerings focused around sending/receiving money. Square, while they don't have a strong B2C product, does spend a lot of time sticking their logo in your face every time you go to a merchant that uses Square. By contrast, Stripe is an infrastructure company. The best parallel I can think of might be a company like Maersk (one of the world's largest container-shipping companies). Sure, you may not recognize the name if you're not in the space, but odds are that they do affect your day-to-day life as a consumer.
- nowherebeen 4y ago
  I would define Stripe as B2B2C. It’s not simply a B2B because they help business charge customers. Their value is convincing business to use their platform. Most businesses will choose payment gateways that their customers use. And by far the number 1 request from customers is usually PayPal. They might be invisible to the customer, but business will alway prefer to integrate with payment gateways that will get customers to say yes faster. It’s nuanced, but that has just been my experience. Logically you are correct though, on the surface, brand recognition should not matter.
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    > I would define Stripe as B2B2C. I agree; this is more accurate. > And by far the number 1 request from customers is usually PayPal. Do you have any data on this? I'm genuinely curious. Not only do I have a long list of negative experiences with PayPal that skew my own take, but I also have no idea where to look for this kind of industry-wide data on B2B2C customer-demand.
    - nowherebeen 4y ago
      I don’t. But I used to run a Yoga platform and used Stripe. None of my customers (Yoga instructors) knew about Stripe. They always requested PayPal or Square to the point, I realized using Stripe only made my life easier, but my customers didn’t care. It was a huge hassle to convince them a) to use my platform and b) to use Stripe. So it became 2x more difficult to onboard them. Same thing for their customers. Since I was a new platform, they ask their instructors why it wasn’t PayPal or Square. They trusted those brands to hand over their card.
- peanuty1 4y ago
  > Square, while they don't have a strong B2C product Huh? Block (formerly Square) has an incredibly strong B2C product (the #1 finance app on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store in the US) called Cash App (formerly Square Cash).
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    You are right. My mistake; I don't use that app, and I'd totally forgotten about it.