Stripe To Win Big In Europe With Google Alum

Online payments processor Stripe announced last week that it has hired Google alum and entrepreneur Matt Henderson to lead its project strategy division in its Dublin hub. Henderson will oversee the company’s 150 person engineering operations while reporting to chief technology officer David Singleton. The hire is seen as a move by Stripe to strengthen its European leadership.

Henderson comes to Stripe directly from Google, where he led the search giant’s efforts to scale the Google Play app store. Henderson joined Google in 2014 after the firm acquired Rangespan, the shopping analytics platform that he co-founded in 2011. Prior to founding Rangespan, Henderson spearheaded European marketplace strategy for Amazon for seven years.

Stripe co-founder John Collison spoke to The Irish Times about Henderson’s hire, noting that he was excited to have persuaded Henderson to direct product strategy at a time when the company is particularly focused on scaling their presence in the European market: “Matt is something of a renaissance man, having helped some of the largest and most well-known tech companies grow and as someone who has successfully built his own business. We are really lucky to get him as the person responsible for leading product and engineering efforts in Dublin.”

Indeed, Henderson’s employee coincides with a key moment for Stripe as the payments company turns its attention increasingly to Europe. Stripe’s subscription billing service was just introduced in Europe last month, following its introduction in the United States last year.

Stripe is also focusing deeply on issues and opportunities related to the new European regulatory requirement known as strong customer authentication (SCA) compliance. This new legislation will take effect in September and require businesses to put an additional layer of authentications into all online card payments.

Henderson wrote about his decision to take on the role at Stripe in a post on Medium, saying that he “like[s] the sense of adventure that comes from working towards a difficult future vision”: “It led me to join a relatively small company 15 years ago (Amazon.com) and then to found a start-up (Rangespan). In the five years since Google acquired Rangespan, I’ve had a fantastic experience working with great people, but the urge for the next adventure was growing.”