Pre-tax profits at the UK arm of the Collison brothers' Stripe online payments business last year increased more than five fold to £14.56m (€16.76m).
New accounts show that pre-tax profits surged at the London registered Stripe Payments UK Ltd after revenues increased by 42% or £156.67m from £371.1m to £527.8m (€607.8m) in the 12 months to the end of December last.
In a year of rapid expansion at the company, its workforce more than doubled, rising from 152 to 307 with a wages and salaries bill of £46.38m which works out at an average salary of £151,075 for the year.
The company's workforce is made up of 123 in sales and marketing, 80 in engineering, 54 in administration, 44 in authorised payment service and six in business operations.
The directors state that the rise in revenues "is mainly as a result of an increase in processing related activity during the year".
The firm provides authorised payment services to certain Stripe users and also provides marketing and support services and research and development services to related parties.
The firm is a subsidiary of the Dublin based Stripe Payments Europe Ltd which in turn is owned by the US based Stripe Inc.
Founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison, Stripe was first declared a "unicorn" - a privately-owned company that is valued at more than $1 billion - in 2014.
Today, 35 year old Patrick Collison is Stripe CEO with his 33-year old brother John in the role of company President.
Forbes estimates that Patrick and John each have a net worth of $5.5 billion.
Globally, Stripe processed transactions totalling $817 billion in 2022, up 26% from the 2021 total of $640 billion in payments.
The directors describe Stripe as "an Irish-American technology group that builds economic infrastructure for the Internet" and "over the long term, Stripe aims to increase the gross domestic product of the Internet".
The UK firm's administrative expenses last year increased from £368m to £515.8m as the business expanded. The company recorded post tax profits of £14.45m after incurring a corporation tax charge of £114,281.
Profits were boosted at Stripe Payments UK Ltd last year by £2.59m in interest receivable compared to interest payments made of £490,500 in 2021.
At the end of December last, the London firm had shareholder funds of £43.26m that included accumulated profits of £21.14m. The company's cash funds increased almost three fold from £58.29m to £159.37m.
The profits last year take account of foreign exchange losses of £3.32m and non-cash depreciation costs of £1m. The firm's Research and Development (R&D) costs last year more than doubled from £9.48m to £19.44m.
The firm's operating lease costs last year increased more than five fold from £835,420 to £4.6m.
In March, Stripe Inc announced that it had raised an additional $6.5 billion in funding.
In November 2022, Stripe said it would reduce its global workforce by 14%, resulting in 1,000 redundancies. At the time the firm employed 600 people here.
Figures recently released by Stripe show that over the last decade, Irish businesses have processed more than €20 billion on Stripe.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
