What's going on?

Stripe�s been keeping busy in lockdown even if you haven�t: the payments company announced over the weekend that its value has almost tripled in the last year (tweet this).

What does this mean?

Stripe sells software that enables its many business customers � including Amazon, Uber, and Instacart � to accept online payments. And while the company doesn�t say exactly how many transactions those customers are making, it has revealed that more than 50 of them each use its platform to process over $1 billion a year. Consider then the recent surge in online shopping, and Stripe�s new valuation might not come as much of a surprise: it jumped from $36 billion in April last year to $95 billion in its latest fundraising round.

That officially makes it America�s most valuable private startup, and the company reckons it�s just getting started: analysts are expecting only 15% of shopping in the US to be online this year, and 13% in Europe � leaving plenty of room for Stripe to keep growing.

Why should I care?

Zooming in: A company�s only as promising as its future plans.

Stripe has bigger ambitions than just expanding its payments business, mind you: the company announced in December that it�d be expanding its business lending platform, as well as teaming up with investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to offer checking accounts for its online business customers. It�s probably hoping this broader offering will give it a competitive edge in the fast-growing � and cutthroat � payments industry.

For you personally: How to profit from the uptick in digital payments.

Stripe is notoriously tightlipped about when it might list on the stock market, but there are plenty of other publicly available options to tide you over in the meantime: PayPal, Square, and Adyen have, on average, seen their share prices climb more than four times as much as traditional banks and payment companies � think Visa and Mastercard � over the last twelve months.