An online payments company founded by two brothers from Limerick is now worth 3 and a half billion dollars.

John and Patrick Collison's Stripe has just raised 70 million dollars in venture capital funding to boost its value.

The pair set up the firm in 2010 and it's based in San Francisco.

Earlier this year, Apple announced its new payment service Apple Pay, a new digital service that the company calls “an entirely new payment process.”

Buried within that news was the announcement that one of the companies involved with the payment system would be Irish company Stripe.

Stripe powers some of the leading apps in the mobile economy like Instacart,Postmates and DoorDash. 

The company made the announcement on their website stating: "We're adding support for Apple Pay. Apple Pay facilitates frictionless credit card payments on iOS devices, eliminating the need for any manual entry by the customer. Credit card details are not stored on the device or by Apple, and payments are authorized with the TouchID sensor."