An Irish American fintech company is facing boycott threats after its CEO posted a picture from the Tel Aviv beachfront. Entrepreneur Patrick Collison posted on X on Wednesday, “Great to be back in Tel Aviv. I missed this run,” alongside a photograph of the Tayelet.
By Friday morning, Collison’s tweet had been viewed nearly eight million times and had 3,000 comments, with a strew of users calling for the payment processing platform, one largest private fintech companies in the world, to be boycotted.
X users commented that Collison was an “immoral business owner” and supported “an apartheid state carrying out genocide.” “Disgraceful and these cruel tech bros don’t speak for the Irish people,” said one post, while another claimed the photograph of Tel Aviv depicted “occupied Palestine.”
Some customers said they would stop using Stripe. “I am removing @stripe from my tech stack. I don’t care if it means I’m losing money,” tweeted one account with 30k followers. Advocacy group Tech4Palestine accused Collison of posting “propaganda” and told media outlets that they plan to start a campaign to get people to leave the payment platform.
The calls came despite Collison’s advocacy for Palestinians. In 2019, the Irish-American billionaire visited Ramallah tech entrepreneurs and in 2021 he led an investment round for a Palestinian teen’s Gaza-based start-up.
Bloomberg journalist Ashlee Vance posted in Collison’s defence, saying she had been with him on trips to the West Bank and “watched him apply his usual intelligence, optimism and sincerity in every interaction he had”.
Pro-Israel accounts supported Collison’s post. The official X account of the State of Israel welcomed the tech leader, as did Shaun Maguire, a partner in venture capital group Sequoia Capital, who encouraged Collison to do a workout along the beachfront. Another tech founder asked if Collison had plans for Shabbos.
According to the Irish Independent, Collison is on a business trip to Israel, where the fintech giant launched operations in 2022.
Stripe allows app developers to embed payment solutions into their products. One of their main competitors is Israeli company Rapyd, based in Tel Aviv, who have also attracted backlash from anti-Israel protesters.
Rapyd CEO and co-founder Arik Shtilman told the JC that the company lost revenue in the wake of Gaza demonstrations, but he was not perturbed. “We can withstand anything. We are not concerned. We understand it is part of the cost of doing business as an Israeli company,” Shtilman said.
The JC reached out to Stripe for comment.