Stripe – 第 2 页 – Tech Magazine xi39 news

Navier partners with Stripe to offer electric boat commute to far-flung employees

2024-06-15

Image Credits: Navier

Electric boat startup Navier has landed the first official pilot program for its hydrofoiling watercraft, partnering with Stripe to bring passengers from San Francisco’s outskirts to the downtown area.

Stripe will pay Navier to shuttle employees from Larkspur, where a number of them are concentrated, to its office near Oyster Point. An hour’s drive at the best of times, and passing right through central SF, this is not a pleasant commute by car. Half an hour by boat — especially an electric hydrofoiling boat, which in my experience is quite a smooth, quiet ride — would be infinitely preferable.

Navier’s six-passenger N30, which made its official debut in 2022 after an accelerated development period, isn’t going to make a big dent in traffic on its own, of course. Even if the company were to add the five-seven more vessels it plans to as they are built, that’s only a handful of cars off the road.

But as a pilot program, the intent is not to operate at scale but to identify the means of and barriers to that scale. Navier has been shopping around the West Coast looking for a good place to do this, and it seems that Stripe and the Bay Area made the best case.

Navier’s hydrofoiling electric boat cruises West Coast waterways to line up first pilot programs

“Over the next few months, our goal is to identify the most critical commuting routes from Oyster Point and gain insights into commuter behaviors. This will help us fine-tune our services to alleviate traffic congestion in coastal cities while addressing issues like pollution and lost work hours,” said founder and CEO Sampriti Bhattacharyya. “Furthermore, our pilot program will be instrumental in refining our onboard systems, including automated collision detection and autonomous navigation technologies.”

Those will be increasingly helpful as Navier pursues larger vessels, like the 30-passenger model they’re developing. While fully autonomous boats are still some ways off (though perhaps closer than cars), a 30-passenger ferry operable by a single person instead of three, and running on electricity represents huge potential savings for the companies running these routes already. But trust has to be built around systems like auto-docking, animal detection and so on.

The Navier N30’s cockpit. **Image Credits:** Navier

Other coastal cities with commute problems may take notice if the pilot program goes well. Certainly in my own environs of Seattle, traffic between certain parts of the city (and a newly uncovered waterfront district) suggest a renewed focus on nautical transit may not be far off.

“Our initiative focuses on transforming these journeys into seamless, efficient and enjoyable experiences,” said Bhattacharyya. “We’re introducing a water shuttle service equipped with amenities that enhance on-the-go productivity, such as desks and Wi-Fi. This service aims to encourage commuters to switch from individual car travel to a more pleasant, productive, zero-emission alternative.”

Stripe curbs its India ambitions over regulatory situation

2024-05-31

by admin with No Comment Tech

Image Credits: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Stripe, the world’s most valuable fintech startup, said on Friday that it will temporarily move to an invite-only model for new account sign-ups in India, calling the move “a tough decision” as it navigates the country’s evolving regulatory landscape.

In a statement posted on its website, Stripe said businesses in India will no longer be able to sign up for new accounts through the company’s website, and will instead need to request an invite. The startup, which competes with Cashfree and YC-backed Razorpay in the country, will now focus on supporting a select number of businesses, particularly those focusing on international expansion.

“The regulatory landscape in India continues to evolve, and our goal is to offer the same experience in India that we aspire to offer to all our users worldwide,” Stripe said in the statement. “For example, enabling all new users to launch quickly with easy onboarding is a fundamental Stripe feature that we cannot promise in India today.”

Stripe didn’t specify which regulatory change affected the firm. The Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, has introduced a series of stringent policy changes in the past two years that have impacted several financial services firms and startups.

The change is unlikely to make a material impact to Stripe’s bottom line given that the startup has limited business in India, and for that matter, many Asian markets.

Stripe said it remains committed to the Indian market in the long-term and is working to build the necessary infrastructure to support more users in the country by the second half of 2025.

Businesses in India that were planning to use Stripe for processing payments will need to explore alternative options in the interim. Existing users will not be impacted, Stripe said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Deal Dive: A Stripe secondary deal worth paying attention to

2024-05-26

by admin with No Comment Tech

Image Credits: Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

Venture capitalists and founders are hoping — praying? — for exits to pick back up in 2024. A recent TechCrunch+ survey found that there is consensus among VCs that exits will start to rebound this year, but the when and the how are still a bit fuzzy.

The consensus, though, is that fintech Stripe will go public this year. The investors surveyed clearly aren’t the only ones who are excited about a potential Stripe exit in 2024, either. According to secondary data tracker Caplight, there has been an absolute flurry of buyers looking to get shares in the company in recent months.

While bids tell us one thing, deals tell us another, and a closed transaction this week tells us a lot about what could happen to Stripe in 2024. On Tuesday, literally the day after New Year’s Day, a secondary sale closed that valued Stripe shares at $21.06 apiece; that values the startup at $53.65 billion, according to Caplight data.

Stripe declined to comment.

There are a few reasons why this deal is worth paying attention to. For one, Stripe’s $53 billion value marks an increase from the company’s most recent primary round last March, when Stripe was valued at $50 billion.

Sure, you could say what’s a $3 billion valuation increase between friends, regarding a company that was worth nearly $100 billion at the beginning of 2022? I get it, but that increase is a bigger deal than its direct value.

For one, this secondary sale shows that investors think Stripe is growing its valuation again, which is a good sign for Stripe — obviously — but it’s also an anomaly compared to many other startups at that stage that aren’t AI companies or SpaceX, of course.

Back in December, I surveyed multiple secondary investors about the state of secondaries and where they were finding attractive opportunities. The thing they all agreed on is that the majority of high-flying startups from the peak of the market frenzy in 2021 still needed to lower their valuation to be attractive.

More than 40 investors share their top predictions for 2024

So a startup like Stripe — which did slash its valuation 52% in 2023 — getting a flurry of activity shows that investors likely think it is properly valued and ready to start growing again.

Investors looking to buy shares at this growing valuation is also a good sign of a potential IPO to come. Back in March, I spoke with a handful of secondaries investors — yeah, I’m pretty much always talking to these folks — on how we could use secondary deal information to track and predict when companies were going to go public. They told me that if any of these overvalued late-stage startups wanted to have a successful IPO, they’d need to slash their valuation and give investors the opportunity to drum up interest — and their position in the company — before going out. Well, that’s exactly what is happening with this Stripe deal.

By looking at who’s buying the shares on the secondary market, you can often tell whether the company will go public sooner rather than later. If it’s a large crossover investor or someone who largely invests in public stocks, like T. Rowe Price or Fidelity, that’s another positive signal that an IPO is just over the horizon. We don’t have that data for Stripe, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

While of course I can’t guarantee that Stripe will be one of the first IPOs in 2024, it shows that the company is ready. And if that does happen, I think Stripe could be the perfect public listing to revive the late-stage venture market and defrost the exit environment.

A good exit from Stripe would show that there is exit hope for the startups that got overvalued in 2021 but were built on solid fundamentals. Plus, I’d imagine that any late-stage investor who is able to hold their shares after Stripe goes public wouldn’t be looking at as big of a loss as it may seem now.

And even if Stripe doesn’t go public anytime soon, this deal shows us that investors are picking their winners from 2021 and that the market may see some growth again.

YC-backed African fintech Cleva, founded by Stripe and AWS alums, raises $1.5M pre-seed

2024-05-26

by admin with No Comment Tech

Image Credits: Cleva

Nigerian fintech Cleva, focused on creating a banking platform for African individuals and businesses to receive international payments by opening USD accounts, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding.

The round was led by 1984 Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Other participants in the round include The Raba Partnership, Byld Ventures, FirstCheck Africa and several angel investors.

Aaron Michel, a partner at 1984 Ventures, expressed support for Cleva’s founders, Tolu Alabi and Philip Abel, noting that their product provides a means for Africans to navigate hyperinflation challenges, which he describes as a massive opportunity. “The team is uniquely qualified to address this given their experience building banking products at Stripe and robust platforms at AWS. The impressive early growth is a testament to the team’s unique capacity to execute across Africa and the U.S.,” he added.

Y Combinator also participated in Cleva’s pre-seed round as the fintech begins its involvement in the accelerator’s winter 2024 batch this month. The famed accelerator has previously backed African startups helping freelancers and remote workers on the continent open U.S. bank accounts for receiving payments, savings and currency exchange, such as Grey Finance and Elevate (formerly Bloom).

CEO Alabi, in an interview with TechCrunch, explained the rationale behind launching the platform in August despite a competitive landscape with other platforms like Techstars-backed Geegpay and Payday.

First, she underscored the persistent challenges Africans still face in receiving international payments for their skills and products, a pain point both founders identified through secondhand experience and extensive research. They estimate the market for facilitating payments for remote workers and freelancers in Africa to be an $18 billion opportunity.

Another crucial factor is founder-market fit. Both founders share a strong connection with the African market. Born and raised in Nigeria, they moved to the U.S. on college scholarships, where Abel attended MIT while Alabi subsequently went to business school at Stanford. Notably, they bring valuable technical and product experience from their roles at major tech companies, including Amazon, Stripe, AWS and Twilio.

“Then there’s the market opportunity,” noted Alabi in the interview. “The problem that we’re trying to solve, which is enabling people to receive international payments, is not a Nigerian problem nor an African one. It’s a global problem; people in Latin America, Asia and even Canada need to receive dollars for their work and service. We’re starting with Nigeria because we know the market and it’s also a big market. But we feel like because of our backgrounds, we’re very well positioned to solve this problem at a global scale.”

Cleva has initially launched its services to Nigerians, allowing users to open USD accounts, with onboarding requiring a Bank Verification Number (BVN) and a government-issued ID. (It’s worth highlighting that while Cleva exclusively provides USD accounts, other players offer GBP and EUR accounts.) In the four months since its launch, the Delaware- and Lagos-based fintech has facilitated the opening of U.S.-based accounts for “thousands” of Nigerians, processing over $1 million in monthly payments while experiencing month-on-month revenue growth of 100%, according to the CEO.

As Alabi highlights, the fintech differentiates itself from the competition in two key areas: customer experience and business model. “We believe in going above and beyond for our customers to have a great experience. This is the feedback we’ve gotten from customers. They know that when they email us or reach out to our customer support, it won’t take one week or two weeks,” she remarked.

Meanwhile, the YC-backed startup, which generates revenue when users swap and exchange their funds (in USD accounts) for the local currency (in naira for now), also charges a 0.9% fee on deposits into customers’ USD accounts. Notably, Cleva caps fees at $20, distinguishing itself from competitors that often apply an uncapped 1% fee regardless of the amount received.

Looking ahead, Cleva has several upcoming products in its pipeline to diversify revenue streams, including USD cards and savings in U.S. assets, CTO Abel said in the interview. Also, Cleva, which has had to scale through the common challenges for fintechs in its category, such as finding the right banking partner and talent, will soon target Africans in the diaspora. To that end, other upcoming products, per its website, include allowing users to create professional invoices and send USD globally, entering a competitive remittance category where platforms like Flutterwave’s Send, Chipper Cash, Lemfi and Afriex are active.

The total addressable market for fintechs focusing on freelancers and Africans in the diaspora is poised for sustained growth. This trend is fueled by a globalizing world, where more young Africans upskill and export their talents to meet the increasing demand for skilled individuals. “Long term, we are open to Cleva evolving from just being a product-only service to being a platform issuing APIs to do a bunch of other things that help us distribute services across other African countries or around the world,” Abel said, providing more details on Cleva’s future roadmap.