The record round, led by growth investors Insight Partners and DST Global, underlines the ambition of the seven year old UK business, which is transforming the world of digital commerce by providing merchants with a solution that enables payments across all geographies and channels. Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, Blossom Capital, Endeavor Catalyst and other strategic investors are also participating in the round. Checkout.com will use the funding to continue its rapid growth in Europe, the US and the Middle East, with further expansion into Asia and Latin America.
The London-headquartered company, whose solutions already power many of the UK and EU’s leading fintechs, offers the world’s most comprehensive cross-border payment solution for digital commerce. Checkout.com’s proprietary technology helps fast growing businesses have seamless and reliable global payment processing for both companies and consumers. 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 single, unified integrated platform which also provides fraud management tools, analytics and comprehensive reporting features.
Founder Guillaume Pousaz said: “We have been fortunate to have some of the world’s leading investors approach us for some time but our focus has remained on building the very best suite of products we can for our merchants on four continents. Having built a sustainable business, one hire at a time, it was crucial to find partners that share our vision of how enterprise businesses will consume financial services in the future. We have anticipated this from our early days and have designed Checkout.com’s platform from the outset so that we can easily deliver incremental services to our customers as the company expands its offering.”
“Bringing world-class investors on board for our first funding round is a validation of everything the Checkout.com team has worked hard to achieve over the years and a way to flag just how serious we are about building a global leader that can serve any business, in any geography. The capital will help us increase the speed at which we roll out new products to address our merchants increasingly complex needs. Performance in payments and data streams are key drivers of success for merchants. Our objective remains to help our customers to grow their businesses, by providing them with the solutions and insights they need to win market share.”
Checkout.com enterprise customers include some of the world’s best known brands, such as Samsung, Easygroup, Getty Images, Deliveroo, Transferwise, Patreon and Virgin Active. It processes more than 150 currencies and has 345 staff, with nearly 200 based in London and the rest in the company’s eight offices. Its team is expected to triple over the next three years as the company expands its core business and moves into new product areas.
Following the fundraising, Deven Parekh, Managing Partner at Insight Partners and an early investor in Twitter, Alibaba and JD.com, will take a seat on the board.
Deven Parekh said: “We’ve been following Checkout.com for some time and we have been impressed by their dedication to building the right product for their merchant customers, as well as their commitment to creating a profitable business. The payments world is changing rapidly and online payments will be the source of most financial services in future. We are confident that Checkout.com will attract a great proportion of those transactions because its product and unified platform provide the full range of services that growing enterprises require. Insight Partners is excited to welcome the Checkout.com team to our portfolio, and look forward to driving continued growth together.”
Tom Stafford, Managing Partner, DST Global, said: “Payments are a critical component of any online business. With the digital payments market expected to grow to $6 trillion by 2021, we believe Checkout.com can expand rapidly through its technology-driven and customer-centric payments solution. We are delighted to partner with Guillaume and the team.”
Checkout.com has been advised in this transaction by FT Partners and law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
*According to Dealroom data on Series A fundraises, Immunocore ($320m) was the largest Series A fundraise for a UK company in 2015, followed by OakNorth ($200m) in Oct 2017. Outside biotech, the biggest Series A round in Europe was TradePlus24 (Switzerland) in Jan 2019 ($120m).
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About Checkout.com
Checkout.com helps companies accept more payments around the world through one integration. The tech company works with global businesses to optimise their payments, with real-time data. Checkout’s unified global payment processing platform features in-country acquiring, relevant payment methods, feature parity across geographies, fraud filters and reporting features, via one API. It helps businesses in Europe, the US and the Middle East to achieve faster, more reliable processing in more than 150 currencies, with direct access to Visa, Mastercard, American Express, all major international cards, as well as popular alternative and local payment methods. For more see: www.checkout.com
About Insight Partners
Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight currently has over $20 billion of assets under management and has cumulatively invested in more than 300 companies worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. Across our people and our portfolio, we encourage a culture around a core belief: growth equals opportunity. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.
About DST Global
DST Global is one of the leading Internet investment groups globally. Its portfolio includes some of the world’s leading and most valuable Internet companies like Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, WhatsApp, Alibaba and JD. DST Global is headquartered in Hong Kong and has offices in Silicon Valley, New York, London and Beijing.