FinTech: Checkout.com Enters the French Market

Checkout.com –London-based e-payment FinTech– has been granted an e-money licence by the ACPR (Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution).

Goal: Attract French e-merchants and boost their business in Europe.
Checkout.com designed a turnkey solution enabling merchants to accept a wide range of payment methods; they mostly aim for large-scale groups.
This FinTech intends for France to become their main market post-Brexit in the EU. They already hired 15 employees.
Ambition: Gather 10% market share in France in the next 18 months.
Upcoming:
- Grow their Paris office (with 1,000 m² location at least),
- Increase their workforce threefold at least (aiming to hire 70 people by end-2020),
- Attract smaller merchants with new ad hoc offer.
An IPO may also be considered. This move would for instance allow them to attract out-of-the-ordinary customers including airlines.

Fruitful market.... The e-payment market has been expanding, accounting for more than 8% of all payments. According to Capgemini, this segment could be worth several billion dollars globally. In France, it would be amounting to roughly $100 billion (source: JPMorgan).
... however, competitive. France stands out as a strategic market but competition is tough. Many players are already well established, e.g. Limonetik and HiPay, or long-standing industry specialists such as Verifone and Ingenico. A few months ago, Ingenico even unveiled a new strategic plan as they aim to further focus on merchants-oriented services, especially when it comes to e-payments.

Checkout.com hit the news a few months back. In May, they closed one of the largest funding Series in Europe, and raised $230 million.
They achieved $2 billion valuation and keep trying to catch up with their Dutch counterpart, Adyen (which also addresses large-scale groups). As they intend to address smaller organisations as well, Checkout.com would also end up challenging FinTechs such as Stripe.

Category : Alertes quotidiennes