Stripe is opening its first Canadian office in Toronto. The San Francisco-based FinTech company also announced the launch of several new products in Canada.
The company refused to disclose the number of people it plans to hire in Canada as part of the expansion. Though it did note plans to hire for roles in engineering, product, and sales in Toronto.
The Toronto office will play a significant role in the deployment and development of products.
Stripe’s recruiting page on its website shows 15 open positions in Toronto. The bulk of which are for engineers and software, as well as for a technical recruiter, and a centralized HR operations knowledge manager.
This team complements Stripe’s increasingly distributed engineering workforce, including in Dublin and its London FinTech office.
Founded in 2010, Stripe has developed software to help startups and enterprises accept online payments and with other financial operations. The company’s products include payments, billing, analytics, fraud prevention, and more.
Yunong Xiao, Stripe’s head of engineering in Canada and Toronto office lead told BetaKit, “We love that Toronto is the sixth largest FinTech hub.”
While he noted the Toronto office will play a significant role in the deployment and development of products, Xiao said the company is still finalizing some of the details of the office, “so I can’t share any specifics and don’t want to speculate.”
Stripe’s expansion into Canada isn’t entirely unexpected, given that the company has relationships with a number of major Canadian tech firms, including Shopify and Lightspeed.
One of the earliest users of Stripe in Canada may be SkipTheDishes. The food delivery network began using Stripe in 2015.
“Stripe’s products have played a major role in SkipTheDishes’s success over the years, supporting our growth as we’ve scaled from thousands to millions of customer transactions a month in communities all across Canada,” said Rob Stewart, director of engineering at SkipTheDishes. “We’re excited to see what impact this expansion will have on other internet businesses operating in Canada.”
Since then, Stripe’s Canadian partnerships have accelerated.
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In 2020, Lightspeed announced that it was partnering with Stripe as part of its Lightspeed Payments product. Later that same year, Lightspeed launched Lightspeed Capital, a new offering that provides flexible loans to help US-based merchants invest in their business growth. The startup partnered with payment processing software giant Stripe to make the offering available.
Jobber also partnered with Stripe in 2020, offering its customers loans through Stripe Capital.
Shopify chose Stripe Treasury in 2020 to power its Shopify Balance Account and Shopify Balance Card. Stripe Treasury is currently partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. The product allows Stripe clients to embed financial services that let business customers send, receive, and store funds.
Shopify Balance is composed of three products: a bank account, card, and rewards program for Shopify merchants.
In June, Shopify joined Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, Silver Lake, and others in investing $1 billion USD ($1.2 billion CAD) in Stripe.
The new products Stripe announced include Stripe Tax, which helps businesses navigate Canada’s GST and sales taxes; pre-authorized debits, allowing customers to collect large or recurring payments directly from their customers’ bank accounts; and a smart reader for Stripe Terminal. The latter lets businesses accept in-person payments at countertops or throughout their stores.
The company is also launching faster payout speeds that allow eligible businesses in Canada to access funds within three working days.
