Fintech company Checkout.com announced on Friday that it has reached a twelve billion dollar valuation. This valuation is part of an employee stock buyback program. Achieving decacorn status is a rare feat for startups, so the twelve billion dollar figure is a significant accomplishment. This valuation was high enough to place the company’s founder and CEO, Guillaume Pousaz, on the Forbes billionaire list.
However, this new valuation is lower than the company’s peak. In 2022, during a one billion dollar Series D round, Checkout.com was valued at a whopping forty billion dollars. By the end of that same year, as the venture market declined, the company had already internally reduced its valuation to eleven billion dollars. Therefore, the new twelve billion dollar valuation represents a one billion dollar increase from that internal assessment.
It is important to note that this valuation was not set by a new investment. A company spokesperson confirmed that Checkout.com is the only party buying back employee shares, with no outside investors participating in a tender offer. Instead, the valuation comes from an independent third-party assessment known as a 409A valuation. This is different from a valuation set by a professional investor, but it is also not simply the company assigning itself a higher value.
Checkout.com’s main rival, Stripe, experienced a similar valuation setback. Stripe’s valuation fell from ninety-five billion dollars in 2021 to fifty billion dollars in 2023. Stripe has since recovered to a valuation of ninety-one and a half billion dollars as of February, through its own employee tender offers. Unlike Checkout.com, Stripe had outside investors help value it in those transactions. Recent reports also indicate Stripe may be planning another tender offer at an even higher valuation.
Despite competing with one of the most highly valued startups ever, Checkout.com has substantial business achievements. The London-based payments company is a popular choice for large e-commerce sites like eBay and Pinterest. The company stated it began to become profitable by the end of 2024 and is on track for a full year of profitability in 2025. Checkout.com processes approximately one billion dollars worth of e-commerce payments daily. It has also hired three hundred additional employees this year, bringing its total headcount to two thousand people across nineteen global offices.
Regarding the buyback program, Checkout.com confirmed that employees with at least one year of tenure will be eligible. The company declined to disclose the total size of the buyback, either in dollar amount or number of shares.