// Perth-founded eCommerce play Pin Payments has been acquired by London-based global payment processor Checkout.com…
As Startup News has reported in several articles and even a recent podcast, eCommerce has grown significantly during COVID-19. This has furthered accelerated the growth of the $22 billion Australian business-to-consumer online market.
eCommerce payments business Pin Payments was founded in 2013 by Grant Bissett and Dominic Pym to create the first unified approach to payments for small to medium-sized businesses. Their technology reduced the time to market from weeks to a few days.
Much of the early work and development was done out of Perth, although the headquarters for the business had been Melbourne in recent years.
Pin Payments supports many major online commerce platforms and shopping carts such as WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento. Additionally, payments can be accepted from credit and debit cards without needing a merchant account from a bank.
The company has been sold to London-based Checkout.com, their second major acquisition of 2020 following the purchase of French startup Process Out in February this year.
Despite being relatively unknown in these parts, Checkout.com last year raised a cool US$230 million in Series A funding with a valuation just shy of US$2 billion. This represented one of the largest Series A rounds for a European based startup.
The undisclosed deal for Pin Payments represents an exit for the main shareholders which includes Allectus Capital (previously Vix Investments) who provided $3.1m Series A funding back in 2015, along with Grant and Dominic themselves.
The 14-strong team at Pin Payments will now join with Checkout.com’s team and be split among their existing offices in Perth and Melbourne.
Globally, Checkout.com has over 700 staff across 10 offices.
“Australia is a key market for our business. The acquisition of Pin Payments represents our investment to serve Australian entrepreneurs with world-class technology and a truly global acquiring network,” said Guillaume Pousaz, Checkout.com founder and CEO.
In Pin Payments, we found an awesome team who shared a similar dedication to solving problems for businesses with innovative financial technology. We look forward to welcoming them to our team and working together.”
Guillaume Pousaz, Checkout.com.
Meanwhile Grant Bissett said that this acquisition was a natural move for Pin.
“Pin Payments was born out of our desire to offer businesses an easy way to get paid online and be on a level playing field with the local and overseas competitors,” said Grant.
“This (exit) … offers our merchants access to Checkout.com’s global acquiring footprint. We’re delighted to be joining Checkout.com and look forward to continuing our work and delivering for merchants of all sizes here in Australia and across the region.”
Additionally, Checkout.com has also recently announced its membership of the Libra Association, a non-profit organisation that is facilitating the creation the digital currency Libra. Its purpose is to link this to a fiat currency that supports app-based payments.
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MAIN Photo: from pinpayments.com.
