America used to be behind on digital payments. Not any more

a decade ago Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe, a company in Silicon Valley that helped other tech startups accept . It has since outgrown them all. On March 14th the firm said it had closed a fundraising round valuing it at $95bn—three times its valuation 11 months ago and enough to make it America’s biggest-ever unlisted firm. Stripe is not the only company cashing in on the check-out business, as the payments revolution finally takes off in America.It has been a while coming. In 2018 Ant Financial, China’s payments giant, raised private funds at a valuation of $150bn. It was common then to hear Chinese executives say that America, land of the posted cheque and the hand-signed credit-card receipt, was years behind, held back by a cosy club of banks and credit-card firms.