Guillaume Pousaz, CEO and founder of Payment Platform Checkout.com, spoke at the annual Web Summit Technology Conference held in Lisbon, Portugal in 2022.
Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images
London – Fintech Unicorn Checkout.com offers staff a way to cash out stocks.
The London headquarters payment platform said Friday it plans to launch a stock buyback initiative to help employees “provide a path to liquidity.”
The stock buyback program is based on a new internal valuation of $12 billion, Checkout.com said. Although internally, this rating drops significantly from the last fundraising round.
Checkout.com was valued at $40 billion in the 2022 $1 billion funding round. However, reports say it reduced its internal valuation to $11 billion later that year. According to Checkout.com, it regularly monitors the value of its employees with its equity incentive program.
Fintech competes with payment service providers such as Stripe, Adyen and PayPal. The company processes billions of dollars in transactions each year, including Coinbase, Pizza Hut and H&M.
Such stock sales have proven to be an increasingly popular way for startups to provide liquidity for long-standing employees and other investors, particularly as high-tech companies remain private for a long time amid a multi-year decline in early public offerings.
This year, it exceeds its 30% corenet revenue growth target, forecasting $300 billion in annual e-commerce payments, according to Checkout.com.
“We are focusing obsessively on growth and innovation, particularly with the impact of AI and the expected increase in agent commerce,” Guillaume Pousaz, CEO and founder of the company, said in a press release.
Several other private fintechs have chosen to allow employees to sell their shares in recent months.
In February, Stripe announced a tender offer that would allow early investors and employees to sell their shares at a valuation of $91.5 billion. Meanwhile, Revolut earlier this month offered staff the opportunity to sell secondary market shares at a $75 billion valuation.
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