Stripe’s New Zealand revenue jumps 26% after opening local office

Global payment processing giant Stripe has seen a big lift in its New Zealand business since establishing a local office in late 2024.

For the 12 months to December 31, 2025, Stripe’s New Zealand revenue increased 26% to $229 million.

The firm first put boots on the ground here in late 2024, but has been filing local results since 2018.

As in previous years, it made a close to breakeven result ($1.5m net profit, from 2024’s $1.2m) as nearly all its revenue ($223.2m) went to “cost of services” including a reseller fee to its immediate parent, Dublin-based Stripe Payments Europe (ultimately owned by the US-incorporated Stripe Inc).

Stripe’s NZ revenue

Income tax expense was $632,000 from the year-ago $443,000.

Employee costs increased from the year-ago $536,000 to $2.1m.

“The ‘reseller fee’ paid mostly to its Irish parent looks rather like the ‘service fees’ paid by Google, Facebook and AWS [Amazon Web Services],” said Tax Justice Aotearoa member Nick Miller, a former EY senior manager in Britain and senior investigator with Inland Revenue NZ.

“Even if it can be justified as an arm’s length amount, it is likely in substance to be a royalty to which withholding tax should be applied,” Miller said.

The tax advocate wanted a detailed breakdown of the cost of sales. Stripe did not immediately respond to questions.

Miller has applied the same question to the likes of AWS and Elon Musk’s Tesla (which sent most of its 2025 New Zealand revenue to the Netherlands) and others, with no response.

Notes with Stripe’s NZ accounts say there was “no material impact” from New Zealand’s adoption of the OECD-backed measure for a 15% global minimum tax rate for certain multinationals.

Pillar Two came into effect on January 1, 2025.

Earlier, Auckland University tax expert Victoria Plekhanova told the Herald that “Pillar Two will not impact the amount of revenue Big Tech firms report in NZ and the tax they pay in NZ”.

Pillar Two is complex, but in our case, the key reason for it not applying is simple: our corporate tax rate is above 15%.

“New Zealand’s an important part of our business. We’ve got some incredible customers over there. Xero is one of the flagships,” Stripe Australia New Zealand managing director Karl Durrance told the Herald as he announced the opening of an NZ office, headed by Soul Machines alum Ben Hanna.

“Hiring Ben is a deliberate, thoughtful moment where we want to manage New Zealand as an independent country and get a lot closer to the market and get a deeper understanding of what the needs are,” the MD said.

“Because I think the general assumption that it’s the same as Australia is not correct. So this is going to give us a chance to get that level of fidelity so that we can invest in New Zealand in a different way to meet the needs of merchants there.”

Stripe was founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010.

The pair still run the company today.

The privately-held firm has frequently been the subject of IPO speculation. Last year, Patrick Collison told the Herald there were no plans or need to list.

In February, Stripe offered stock to employees at a US$159 billion valuation, nearly triple its 2021 level.

“The very interesting statistic about New Zealand is that 40% of our customers in New Zealand, from a volume perspective, are doing cross-border [selling]. That’s way higher than Australia. Australia’s about 30%. And Australia is way higher than the rest of the world,” Durrance said.

Stripe pitches its support for multiple types of payment, and the ability to easily set things up so people can pay for New Zealand goods in their local currency (with adaptive, real-time conversion) - an option Stripe says lifts sales by an average 11.9%.

Stripe has also moved into sales terminals and Tap to Pay for Apple and iPhone phones – so a customer only has to tap their card or digital wallet to your smartphone to make a payment, no extra hardware required.

The full platform comes with some robust pay-as-you tap pricing for Stripe’s NZ customers (2.7% + 30c for processing domestic card payments and 3.7% + 30c for international) but no setup costs or monthly fees.

Collison said, “With international transactions, we ourselves incur an awful lot of costs, whether it’s with FX [foreign exchange], or with other payment methods or fraud prevention.”

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.