Checkout.com is now worth $40bn

Checkout.com, the payments giant, was valued at $40 billion this week after obtaining $1 billion in funding, making it Europe’s second most valuable business behind Klarna.

Despite its London headquarters, Checkout.com has only two European investors on its balance sheet. Blossom Capital has been a backer since the company’s Series A round in 2019, and the University of Oxford’s Endowment Fund has joined for this round.

As a result, in the event of a Checkout withdrawal, European investors will not partake in the gains.

Checkout.com is an outlier among local financial startups due to the lack of European VCs on its cap table.

Checkout’s departure from the norm can be explained in part by its bootstrapped origins. Guillaume Pousaz, the company’s founder, grew it for seven years before seeking outside funding. As a result, by the time the business raised its $230 million Series A round in May 2019, it was more suitable to growth investors from the United States and Asia.