Stripe was founded by Patrick and John Collison and is now valued at $1.75 billion (€1.3bn). They set up the company about five years ago.

Peter Thiel who backed Facebook has led the funding and the money raised will be used for international expansion.

Stripe processes internet payments and is seen as a challenger to Paypal and a company called Square which is backed by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

Stripe is based in California and employs about 90 people.

The Collison brothers are in their early 20s and hit the headlines as teenagers when a software company they founded sold for millions.