June 9, 2022: -The co-founder of fintech giant Stripe takes the company’s business practices following the complaints from rivals that it deals in unfair competition.

On Tuesday, John Collison, Stripe’s president, said he is “pretty unapologetic” regarding the company’s decisions to launch similar features to rival fintech firms, further saying that this is “how the economy works.”

“Sometimes we launch a product first, and then people come along and create competitors to that,” Collison told reporters at Amsterdam’s Money 20/20 fintech conference.

“Sometimes there will be someone else in the market with a product such as Plaid, and then we will enter a space with a similar product but with pure differentiation for customers.”

Huge tech platforms have attracted criticisms for borrowing ideas from smaller competitors very frequently. Facebook’s company Meta and Twitter have been targeted for mimicking the audio chat app Clubhouse with competing features.

Stripe has faced allegations of foul play from fellow financial technology firms, including Bolt, a one-click checkout service, and Plaid, after being viewed as a darling of Silicon Valley that allows fintech companies to have the customer data securely.

Ryan Breslow, the founder of Bolt, describes Stripe as a “mob boss” in Silicon Valley, blaming it for conspiring with investors such as Y Combinator and Sequoia to make it more difficult for rival firms to compete.

In a since-deleted tweet, Plaid CEO Zach Perret accused Stripe of using information obtained from an interview with Plaid to launch a similar product called Financial Connections.

Collison said any suggestion Stripe is operating a monopoly is “ludicrous and disprovable.”

“There are so many payment companies,” he said, adding firms like PayPal and Adyen offer much competition for Stripe.