London-based Checkout.com valued at mammoth $15bn in funding deal

British fintech “unicorn” Checkout.com has become Europe’s most valuable private business and the fourth most valuable private financial technology company in the world.

Checkout.com said on Tuesday it had raised $450m (£333.5m) from Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks Capital and all its existing investors. The deal valued Checkout.com at $15bn, almost tripling what it was valued at just last year.

Checkout.com makes software that lets companies accept payments online. It works with the likes of Deliveroo, Pizza Hut, Klarna, Samsung and H&M. The company has ridden a wave of online shopping that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, with surging volumes and increased investor interest. Checkout.com raised $150m last June in a deal that valued the company at $5.5bn. At the time, that was triple the company’s prior price tag.

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“Payments affect everything from the customer journey to a business’s ability to enter new markets or launch new products,” Checkout.com founder and chief executive Guillaume Pousaz said in a statement.

“This latest fundraise reflects our market-leading position and the size of our aspirations as we accelerate in our mission to empower merchants to build better products, drive more revenue and create innovative business models by reimagining interactions with financial services.”

Checkout.com was founded in London in 2012 but only began raising outside money in 2019. Since then it has raised over $380m, helping to fuel phenomenal growth over the last few years. Revenues in Europe doubled to $14.6bn in 2019. Payment volumes tripled last year.

Checkout.com’s surging payment volumes have been helped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay at home orders around the world led to a historic bump in online shopping as people were unable to visit shops. In the UK, £1 in every three is now spent online, compared to one in five before the pandemic struck.

“We believe the shift to digital commerce is still in the early stages, and Checkout.com’s focus on developing a best-in-class technology platform has positioned them to be a leader in the industry for years to come,” Scott Shleifer, a partner at New York-based Tiger Global Management, said in a statement.

Checkout.com competes with the likes of California-based Stripe and Dutch payment firm Adyen (ADYEN.AS). Checkout.com’s $15bn valuation makes it Europe’s most valuable venture-backed business and the fourth largest financial technology company in the world. The company has 17 offices around the world and last year doubled staffing numbers to 1,000.

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