Stripe, a provider of payment processing tools for websites and mobile apps backed by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, has made its services officially available to clients in France. The firm also announced that it has built a local team and now provides support for users in French from an office in Paris.
The startup has been testing its capabilities in France for over a year and reports that it has already had thousands of French businesses start building on the Stripe platform. These include companies such as Withings and Dailymotion, SaaS platforms like Algolia and Dashlane, and online marketplaces like Drivy and KissKissBankBank.
Guillaume Princen, who is in charge of expanding Stripe’s business to France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, commented: “Now that Stripe is publicly available in France, we’re looking forward to seeing all the new products and services that French entrepreneurs will develop with Stripe.”
The timing of Stripe’s expansion in France is also particularity interesting due to recent politics in the country. In May, French far right leader, Marine Le Pen, suggested that cryptocurrencies, and specifically Bitcoin, are being promoted by Wall Street banks (JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs ..) to create a cashless world devoid of personal freedom and privacy. She therefore called on cryptocurrencies to be banned in France in the name of economic patriotism.
In February of last year Stripe’s Bitcoin for Checkout feature came out of beta, allowing any merchant to accept the cryptocurrency at the checkout or via an API.
