London-headquartered Checkout.com has just raised a $150m Series B funding round that saw it triple its valuation to $5.5bn, making it one of Europe’s most valuable FinTech startups.
However, given both payment tech venture Klarna and UK challenger bank Revolut have both achieved the exact same valuation of $5.5bn over the past year, it’s still difficult to say exactly, which company can claim the honour of being Europe’s most valuable startup.
Both Revolut and Klarna are among the over 500 enterprise customers Checkout.com has added to its books over the past 12 months. Other new enterprise customers include Grab, Careem, Glovo, Robinhood, Farfetch and Remitly.
Technology focused hedge fund Coatue led the Series B round, which also saw participation from existing investors, including Insight Partners, DST Global, Blossom Capital and Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund GIC.
While the company has been profitable since 2012, it will use the new influx of capital to further strengthen its balance sheet, bringing available cash to over $300m. Checkout.com will also invest in the development of new innovative products, including its upcoming advanced payouts solution and the capability to accelerate settlement times. The Series B fundraise follows a record-breaking $230m Series A in May 2019, which was Europe’s largest fintech Series A round of funding ever.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Coatue to our cap table,” said Guillaume Pousaz (pictured), CEO and founder of Checkout.com. “As meaningful investors in late-stage tech companies such as Instacart, DoorDash, Bytedance and Chime they bring a wealth of experience in building world-class businesses driven by operational excellence. They share our vision for a future of connected payments which made them an obvious choice as partners for us.
“The way money moves into and out of businesses is changing rapidly. I believe that by solving financial complexity, you can radically unlock innovation – starting with digital payments. At Checkout.com, we’ve built a technical architecture that enables pioneers to reinvent industries and redefine their relationship with consumers. Now more than ever, we are confident of our mission to build the connected payments that businesses deserve.”
It has been a busy year for Checkout.com. For starters, its online transaction numbers increased by 250% between May 2019 and and May 2020.
In April this year, Checkout.com joined the Libra Association, the group of companies behind an upcoming cryptocurrency project name Libra, spearheaded by Facebook. The news that Checkout.com had joined the Libra Association came after many of its founding members had opted to abandon the initative after it faced intense public scrutiny.
Moreover, in February 2020 the payment processing platform surprised the market by acquiring ProcessOut, the French startup that provides a smart routing checkout module that works with several different payment providers. It was Checkout.com’s first acquisition.
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