London-based Checkout.com, a company that works with global businesses to optimise their payments with real-time data, has raised $450M (approx €368.9M) in its Series C round of funding. Post this round, the company has tripled its valuation and is now valued at $15B (approx €12.3B), making it EMEA’s most valuable venture-backed business and fourth-largest fintech globally.
Investors in this round
The Series C was led by Tiger Global Management, a New York-based technology investor that partners with dynamic entrepreneurs operating market-leading growth companies, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, ByteDance, and JD.com.
In addition, Greenoaks Capital also joined the round along with participation from existing investors Insight Partners, DST Global, Coatue Management, Blossom Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, and Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund GIC.
Use of the funds
According to Guillaume Pousaz, CEO and founder of Checkout.com, the raised capital will accelerate the company’s mission to empower merchants to build better products, drive more revenue, and create innovative business models by reimagining interactions with financial services.
Speaking on the funding, Pousaz says, “Payments affect everything from the customer journey to a business’s ability to enter new markets or launch new products. Our new investors bring a wealth of experience across payments, technology and scaling companies – crucial knowledge for the next stage of our growth, as we continue to build our vision for the future of Connected Finance.”
With a total of $830M (approx €682.2M) raised within the last two years, Checkout.com’s readily available cash represents one of the strongest balance sheets across all global fintechs.
About Checkout.com
Founded in 2012 by Guillaume Pousaz, the London-based company sells a software platform that makes it easier for businesses to process and take payments over the web.
Checkout.com provides fintech companies with a cross-border payment solution for digital commerce. The business offers direct access to domestic acquiring across payment methods and geographies, including all major credit and debit cards, online banking, PayPal, Apple Pay, and other eWallets. This is achieved through a unified integrated platform which also provides fraud management tools, analytics, and comprehensive reporting features.
The company has a team of 1000 people across 17 offices worldwide, offering its services.
Future of payments
Research from McKinsey & Company highlights the scale of the payments opportunity, with total global payments revenue reaching just under $2T (approx €1.64T) in 2019. Meanwhile, a recent report from Checkout.com in partnership with Oxford Economics, revealed that the challenge that many merchants face is $20.3B (approx €16.68B) lost to false declines in payments in 2019 alone, and more than $12.7B (approx €10.43) handed from first choice merchants to their competitors.
Additionally, customers who gave up on their intended online purchase completely resulted in more than $7.6B (approx €6.24B) of missed opportunity for merchants.
Currently, most of the payment systems are one-size-fits-all which is not suitable for every organisation, the need to drive improved performance, gain transparency across payments and extract valuable information from data is increasingly becoming a competitive differentiator.
And this is where Checkout.com wants to bring the change. It looks to address these issues by giving businesses the required tools to drive – performance and control – through advanced data features, fraud management tools, and comprehensive reporting.
Checkout.com’s new North American headquarters
Besides the latest funding announcement, the company has also revealed the opening of its New York City office. The company first launched in the US in 2017 and has operations in San Francisco.
These offices will help the organisation’s ability to meet the growing demand in the US for Connected Payments solutions, as Checkout.com increases its focus on serving the US-based enterprises in domestic, global and cross-border payments.
In addition, there is also going to be a new office in Denver. Globally, Checkout.com will hire an additional 700 people across all its locations this year.
Previous fundraise
In June 2020, Checkout.com raised $150M (approx €123.2M) its Series B round which valued at $5.5B (approx €4.52B) and was led by technology fund Coatue Management. Also in 2020, it announced the acquisitions of ProcessOut and PinPayments, as well as a strategic investment in Thunes.
Prior to that, in 2019, the fintech company secured a record-breaking $230M (approx €209M) in its Series A round of funding at a valuation of nearly $2B (approx €1.8B).
