Stripe goes international with UK launch of payments platform

Stripe, the company that makes an easy-to-use payments platform for developers and e-commerce outlets, has made its European debut.

The startup today launched operations in the UK and will now allow UK merchants and vendors to accept online payments, no PayPal required.

“Having used and evaluated countless payment services over my last three businesses, Stripe is by far the easiest solution available,” said Thread.com founder Kieran O’Neill in a statement on the news.

“We were able to begin accepting live payments in a matter of minutes, and the integration for Thread.com took a fraction of the time it’s taken previously.”

Stripe launched in Canada about a year ago. The slow global expansion is a big step for the company in competing with legacy systems from the aforementioned PayPal to banks and credit card companies.

Eventually, Stripe plans to bring its platform to underserved and developing markets. Employees have said in the recent past that getting the first international business operations in place will make it easier to create a snowball effect and expand more quickly into other areas.

Stripe also recently launched payroll processing features, announced a Bigcommerce partnership, and teamed up with Facebook-owned backend-as-a-service Parse to emphasize its mobile payments powers.