Categories: Business

Payment service Stripe makes its first acquisition, Kickoff

Stripe, the online payments system for developers and founded by two Irish brothers, John and Patrick Collison, has made its first acquisition; Kickoff.

Kickoff is a task-management and messaging app that’s still in beta, and will be made available on the Apple App Store only as a Mac OS X application and as an iPhone app. Kickoff’s founding team, Michaël Villar and Benjamin De Cock, will both be joining Stripe in San Francisco.

Patrick Collison tweeted earlier today,

Kickoff will continue to exist as it currently does, in beta only, with an official release promised “very soon”. Benjamin De Cock has actually been freelancing for Stripe over the past year. In a blog post today announcing his company’s acquisition, the terms of which have not been disclosed, Benjamin commented of Stripe’s talented team as an incentive to join,

“Stripe’s team is insanely good. People are very kind and the office just feels like a place where you want to spend time when your coworkers are around. And obviously, I should mention how everyone is amazingly talented. As a designer, it’s bliss to feel the product is in great hands and that the user experience will be consistent all the way through.”

Stripe is an online payments system aimed at developers that first launched in 2011. The service, which exists mostly as an API, has been a massive hit with developers since, largely because of its simplicity. Stripe also eliminates the need for (and sometimes the hassle of setting up) a merchant bank account or gateway.

With Stripe’s design acqui-hire in Benjamin (and Michaël as a software developer), Stripe may be looking to boost the visual elements of its service. In January, the company released common visual checkout form elements that it hopes will help improve conversion rates.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

Recent Posts

Financial resilience weakens in SMBs, putting need for robust reporting techniques in the spotlight 

The month-end close process refers to a set of accounting processes to review, record and…

21 hours ago

RAND wargames to see if AI could wipe out humanity with pathogens, geoengineering & nukes

The RAND Corporation wargames scenarios to see if AI could contribute to human extinction by…

3 days ago

Prezent marks another major milestone as Dr. Charlotte Owens appointed to newly announced Senior Executive Board

Since GenAI hit the public market, it’s been a natural fit for a range of…

3 days ago

AI Isn’t a Religion (Yet): Why Tech’s False Prophets Aren’t the Problem

Correct me if I’m wrong, but one of the unofficial slogans of Trump’s second administration…

4 days ago

10 Independent Writers Leading the Design Conversation in 2025

While major design houses and celebrities often steal the spotlight, it’s the independent voices behind…

1 week ago

Building trust across clouds: Expert insight on how AI cloud-native MFT platforms are empowering businesses (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

For modern, data-driven organizations, managing data effectively is an ongoing challenge.  (more…)

1 week ago