Two Irish brothers who became dotcom millionaires in their teens have hit the Silicon Valley payola trail again.

Limerick brothers Patrick (22) and John (20) Collison have just secured investment that values their latest project at close to $20million – before it has even launched a project.

The Collison made worldwide headlines in 2008 when they sold their software company for a reported $5million – while John was still in transition year at secondary school.

After a Canadian firm bought their software company Auctomatic, the brothers relocated to California to fund their new venture Stripe.

Designed to make it simple for website operators to accept payments online, Stripe has already attracted investment from some of the biggest hitters in the new technology game.

Patrick Collison refused to comment on who is funding the Stripe venture when contacted by the Irish

Times but he did confirm that a number of internet firms are already testing the product ahead of its launch.

Patrick, a former Young Scientist of the Year winner in Ireland, also revealed that he began working on the Stripe concept with his brother John during their studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University.

They have since relocated to Palo Alto, one of the main cities in Silicon Valley, to work on developing the Stripe business.

The Irish Times has claimed that a number of high profile tech investors are backing the Stripe project including PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk who sold their business to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

Andreessen Horowitz, a Californian venture capital firm with close to $1 billion in funds, has also reportedly backed Stripe as has Sequoia Capital, one of the early backers of Google.