This week, Checkout.com scored a whopping $40 billion valuation after raising $1 billion in fresh funding. The monster Series D came courtesy of more than half a dozen leading investors, including Tiger Global, Dragoneer and Insight Partners. It is also on the heels of what has been a wildly successful year for both the startup and the white-hot digital payments space it is at the forefront of.
To put it simply: Checkout.com moves money between shoppers and online merchants around the world. Its full-stack platform acts as a gateway, risk engine and payment processor, and it supports virtually every kind of card payment, digital payment and bank transfer there is.
And, as you can probably imagine, its business has done remarkably well amid the e-commerce boom fueled by the global pandemic. Payment volume on the platform tripled for the third year in a row, its valuation has more than doubled since its $450 million Series C last year. It has also grown an impressive customer base of top-performing companies like Netflix and Sony.
“By combining an elegant technology stack with industry expertise and an ‘extra-mile’ approach to service over the past decade, we’ve built deep partnerships with some of the world’s most innovative companies,” founder and CEO Guillaume Pousaz said in a statement. “Our Series D is a validation of that work — but given we’re still in ‘chapter zero’ of our journey, it will also fuel our efforts to unlock the enormous untapped opportunity ahead.”
‘Just Getting Started’
This massive round of funding seems like more than just “validation,” though. It has also vaulted the 10-year-old startup to the coveted “dragon” valuation of $12 billion or more — a status enjoyed by a very small, but growing, community of tech companies. As of January, the lucky few here in America are SpaceX ($100 billion), Stripe ($95 billion), Instacart ($39 billion), Epic Games ($28.7 billion), Databricks ($28 billion), Chime ($25 billion), Fanatics ($18 billion), Miro ($17.5 billion), Plaid ($13.4 billion), OpenSea ($13.3 billion) and Grammarly ($13 billion).
And now, Checkout.com is joining them. The London-based startup has a small office here in New York and says it plans to use much of this fresh funding to fuel a “major” U.S. expansion. This will reportedly make it one of the only providers in the country to offer a fully cloud-based platform that is directly connected to local networks in all key geographies and for all major alternative payment methods.
“We have a long-faced substantial demand to serve the U.S. market, and with our Series D we’re doubling down on our commitment to scaling our platform, partnerships and products for customers here,” Checkout.com’s NYC-based CFO Céline Dufétel said in a statement, adding that, like its approach in other countries, the company will maintain its focus on enterprise, especially in areas like fintech, food delivery, travel and e-commerce. “We’re looking to help our U.S. customers grow domestically and internationally, and to help our non-U.S. customers expand into the market here.”
She added that Checkout.com expects to grow its North American employee headcount by 200 percent this year. The company currently has dozens of open tech positions available at its New York office.
Checkout.com also plans to enlarge its business in the “Web3” space, which includes tech like cryptocurrency and NFTs. It already works with major exchanges like Coinbase and wallets like Meta’s Novi, accounting for about 80 percent of the global trading volume, according to the company. But it would like to expand its presence even more, and is currently beta testing a new product that will settle transactions for merchants using digital currencies.
Between this, its U.S. expansion and its various new products in the works, Checkout.com appears to have a part in every facet of modern digital commerce. And investors, especially longtime backer GIC, seem excited for what the future holds.
“Checkout.com is a leader in the massive market for next-gen payment solutions and the key digital payments partner for many of the world’s leading companies. As a long-term investor, we are impressed by the company’s product innovation and customer-centric approach,” Choo Yong Cheen, a chief investment officer at GIC, said in a statement. “That’s why we’ve been committed to its long-term future since Series A and why we’re part of Series D. We believe Checkout.com is just getting started.”
