The Ottawa-based e-commerce platform has invested over US$350 million in the Silicon Valley fintech firm, including in a roughly US$1-billion offering of stock by existing shareholders that closed in May, sources told The Wall Street Journal. Neither Shopify nor Stripe responded to The Logic’s request for comment. (The Wall Street Journal)

Talking point: The two companies have longstanding and lucrative ties, following a 2013 deal that made Stripe the processor for Shopify Payments. The service is the main contributor to the e-commerce platform’s merchant-solutions business line, which brought in US$668 million in revenue or 67.6 per cent of the total in the first quarter of 2021. Shopify’s forthcoming U.S. small-business account and debit-card feature will be built on Stripe’s banking-as-a-service product. Shopify has had to accumulate its stake in Stripe—the most valuable private tech company in the U.S.—by buying shares, but more recently it’s tied commercial partnerships to ownership options. In July 2020, Affirm granted the company warrants as part of a three-year exclusivity deal to issue the loans for the buy-now-pay-later feature in Shop Pay.