UK paytech Checkout.com buys French start-up ProcessOut

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
28th February 2020

Checkout.com, the UK-based payment platform, has bought French fintech start-up ProcessOut – the firm which brands itself as a ‘payment-team-as-a-service’. An amount for the transaction has not been revealed.

The acquisition follows a huge $230 million Series A funding round by Checkout.com last year. The payment platform says it’s the gateway, acquirer and processor all in one. Covering more than 50 countries and more than 15 currencies, it focuses its efforts predominantly on global enterprise customers.

Checkout.com’s coverage

The 2012-founded company now supports debit and credit cards, as well as the likes of Apple and Google Pay, Klarna, PayPal and Alipay. Its latest decision to buy ProcessOut means that Checkout.com will own another module in the payments process.

The French start-up, a team of 14, helps buyers find the best payment provider when it comes to fees and acceptance rates – it calls the service a ‘smart router’. Often buyers might want to use cheaper, local providers but these can have lower acceptance rates than, for example, a Stripe, which is in turn more expensive.

The start-up then presents a buyer’s payment data in a dashboard which generates reports and matches their bank account transactions with transactions on other payment providers. Its clients include Glovo, Veepee, Rakuten.fr, Dashlane and OUI.sncf.

The ProcessOut team

As per the deal, ProcessOut will migrate to Checkout.com’s Paris and London offices. “Whilst we always believe in organic growth, we respect businesses who have built great tech and managed to generate momentum,” says Checkout.com founder and CEO Guillaume Pousaz.

In the last 12 months, ProcessOut says its platform has assessed more than $20 billion in transactions. Now under the arm of Checkout.com’s 600-person team, the French company will continue to operate alongside the electronic money institution license Checkout.com bagged from French regulators last September.

“Combining their expertise and features with our platform will allow us to offer our global merchants a deeper set of actionable insights to improve their acceptance rates and maximize the cost efficiency of their payments,” Pousaz adds.