British fintech startup Checkout.com has raised $230 million in Europe’s largest ever Series A funding round for a fintech, drawing a range of investors that include Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
Checkout.com has built up a customer base that includes Adidas, Samsung, TransferWise, and Virgin since it was founded in London in 2012. The funding round, values it at almost £1.5 billion.
The company, which built its own 100 percent proprietary stack, provides a payment platform for payment gateway services, international acquiring, payment processing as well as risk and fraud tools for global businesses.
It offers a range of integration options and supports 150 currencies, as well as payments from a host of additional payment methods, including 3-D Secure, Apple Pay, and SEPA.
Integration methods include Frames, a customisable payment form, which allows customers to enter their payment details directly on a users’ checkout page. Checkout.com processes these and exchanges them for a secure, single-use token. Alternatives include a full card details API, Checkout.js and a range of options delivered by the company’s software delivery kits (SDKs).
Checkout.com Funding Will Be Used to Roll Out New Products
Switzerland-born founder Founder Guillaume Pousaz said of the Checkout.com funding: “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.”
He added: “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.”
The raise is just the latest sign of both hot investor interest and ongoing industry consolidation in the payments sector; it follows FIS’s agreement to buy the UK’s Worldpay for $34 billion last month.
Read this: FIS Worldpay Acquisition: $43 Billion Deal Latest in Payments Race
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: “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.”
The company currently has 300+ employees across eight offices in Europe, Middle East, US, and Asia Pacific.
