Stripe enters Middle East market with new office in Dubai

By Leandra Monteiro

Stripe, one of Silicon Valley’s most valuable private FinTech companies has chosen Dubai for its first expansion into the Middle East and North Africa. The online payments firms expansion into the MENA region comes just weeks after its latest funding round, which pushed the company’s value to $95 billion.

Stripe, started in 2010 by two brothers from Ireland has announced that as of this week, businesses in the country can use it’s platform to accept online payments and make pay-outs. They can also benefit from it’s fraud protection tools.

According to media reports, Matt Henderson, EMEA Business Lead at Stripe said, “Our launch today also means we can now connect our global user base to the Gulf, enabling them to seamlessly expand their operations in the region.”

The benefit of bringing Stripe’s technology to Dubai, Henderson added, is that “there are a lot of great local businesses that haven’t yet globalized. One of the ways that will help them grow and therefore help them to resonate with investors is opening up these new markets.”

The FinTech company claims more than 10,000 companies have shown an interest in Stripe’s UAE launch. To manage this demand, invites will be queued for the first weeks of availability. A pre-launch beta programme to test the product in the UAE included companies such as Illusions Online, Aceplace, ChatFood and WeKeep, while Irish company Glofox is now using Stripe payments for customers in the UAE as well as its other markets.

According to Stripe, digital payment transactions in the UAE have more than doubled in the last two years, reaching $18.5bn in 2020. With the growth of UAE e-commerce forecasted to keep on increasing, Stripe said, the sector is expected to add nearly $10 billion over the next two years. Additionally Stripe had also voiced its interest in expanding to new markets such as Brazil and India.