Limerick's Collison brothers expand online payments firm to Hong Kong

STRIPE, the online payments firm run by the Collison brothers, has now launched in Hong Kong.

John Collison, Stripe’s president, co-founder and the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, said it was a “very natural fit” for the company to launch in Hong Kong, having earlier established its operations in Singapore and Japan.

The expansion of the San Francisco-headquartered business across Asia follows their roll-out to a further six European countries this June.

In Hong Kong, Stripe is partnering with WeChat Pay and Alipay, two digital services that dominate consumer spending in China, and which combined account for 92% of digital payments in China.

“With Stripe, we are focused on global companies and helping people build global companies,” explained Mr Collison, on CNBC, “and so, when you are starting an internet business, you have the potential to attract a global user base all around the world, and that's what we want to help support.

“With Hong Kong, there's no reason the next billion-dollar company could not come from Hong Kong. We've seen it has traditionally been one of the top finance centres in Asia. There's a very fast-growing start-up system here, and for us it was a very natural fit to launch here,” said Mr Collison.

Mr Collison said that the businesses which use Stripe "now have an additional 600 or 700 million consumers that they can reach. That’s transformative.” 

Brothers Patrick, 28, and John Collison, 26 from Castletroy, earlier this year made the Forbes billionaires list for the first time, joining the ranking of the world’s richest as the youngest newcomer billionaires, worth $1.1 billion each.