How Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison are reimagining payments for the Internet era

When buying online, people were forced to use outside vendors like PayPal to complete a purchase. That gap is where Stripe fits in.

Stripe lets merchants process credit cards directly from their own websites, simply by inserting a few lines of code. While that may seem incredibly minor, transactions experts say it improves the payment experience by keeping customers at merchants' websites, and by reducing the time it takes to pay. That, in turn, increases the likelihood customers will buy, and come back to buy again.

"You don't have that disjointed experience when you go to PayPal, or wherever else, to input your payment information," says Andy Schmidt, research director at CEB TowerGroup, a research firm focused on the financial services industry.

That small change has plenty of evangelists