CNBC
Online payments giant Stripe is still in no rush to go public, with co-founder John Collison telling CNBC the company is happy staying private for now.
“We’re very happy as a private company,” Collison said, speaking in an interview with CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Fintech Abu Dhabi festival.
“Part of where our patience stems from is the fact that it feels like we are very early in Stripe’s journey.”
Collison’s comments come after a Bloomberg report said that Stripe was in early talks with investment banks about going public as early as next year.
Collison said the firm has plans to expand across the Persian Gulf, which includes countries like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Stripe already has clients from $7.5 billion food delivery firm Deliveroo to a small gymwear brand called Squatwolf using it to process payments in the region, he added.
“We launched here in the UAE in June only and we’ve seen this massive ramp-up,” Collison, who is currently Stripe’s president, said.
“This is a massive region that is just starting to inflect in terms of its own growth,” he added. “It feels like we are very early on that journey, we’re still heavily investing.”
Stripe is unlikely to seek an IPO in the immediate future, Collison said.
