2024 Annual Letter

Dear Checkout.com Community,

We had the privilege of welcoming Sir Mo Farah to one of our company-wide meetings in 2024. Mo’s relentless pursuit of excellence—driven by ambition, rigor, and hard work—resonates deeply with the journey we are on at Checkout.com. His story reminds me why I founded this company: to help businesses and their communities thrive in the digital economy.

When we started, legacy infrastructures built for in-person payments weren’t fit for digital merchants, with online acceptance rates often lagging behind physical transactions. We set out to build a payments platform designed for fast-moving digital businesses. In 2012, we secured our first acquiring license in the UK, refusing to accept the status quo. Over a decade later, we focus exclusively on enabling digital commerce for enterprise merchants. We put everything into chasing every basis point, combining payment performance, rapid innovation, and world-class service. That is our ambition— we will never settle and never stop helping our merchants thrive.

2024 – Setting the bar higher 

Thanks to your trust and collaboration, we achieved significant milestones together in 2024:

• Sustainable growth: 40% overall net revenue growth and 45% in Commerce and Fintech (95% of total volumes). Exited 2024 profitably, with full-year profitability expected in 2025. All regions have grown and diversified, our top 10 accounts represent just 18% of total revenues; the US business grew over 80% in 2024.
• Community expansion: 300+ new merchants joined us, including Ticketmaster, Bumble, Trip.com, GetYourGuide, Marca and Heineken. We also expanded partnerships with Agoda, Netflix, Klarna, The Financial Times, Deliveroo, DocuSign, and more. 
• Volume processing: 40+ companies now process over $1 billion annually on our platform, with 67 merchants surpassing $10 million in a single day during Black Friday.
• Customer satisfaction: Our Merchant Net Promoter Score (NPS) rose to 63, reflecting our investments in support and service and our laser focus on putting our customers first.
• Driving customer value: Our Intelligent Acceptance product performed 26,000+ payment optimizations per minute to drive up our merchants’ acceptance rate, resulting in $9 billion in additional revenue for our merchants since launch. On Black Friday, our platform had an uptime of 99.999% and 442 ms average latency. We added 30 new payment methods to the network.  

How we leverage technology to keep our merchants ahead

At Checkout.com, everything we build is grounded in three principles: Direct, Choice, and the Power of the Network.

• Direct: We’ve built our payment infrastructure from the ground up, giving us full control over every part of the stack. With nine domestic acquiring licenses, operations in 55 countries, and support for more than 145 currencies, we enable merchants to process payments globally while meeting local needs. 
• Choice: Merchants need flexibility to design the payment stack that works best for them. Our modular solutions empower businesses to operate a multi-PSP environment, whether they need full end-to-end payment processing or standalone tools like our authentication product, used by brands like Ticketmaster. 
• Power of the Network: The company’s vault now stores over 2.5 billion cards, and every transaction strengthens our network. We process billions of transactions annually, using AI and machine learning to optimize payment performance. In 2024, we recovered $6.6 billion in revenue for our merchants - now accelerating at $1 billion every 35 days.

We also completed one of the most significant technology upgrades in our history, migrating merchants to a faster, more scalable platform that enables quicker product delivery and enhanced reliability.

Geographic expansion

We extended our global reach, making it easier for merchants to connect with their customers in local markets. 

• Japan: We became the first global player to have a direct integration with Visa and Mastercard processing, delivering a 4.15% uplift in acceptance rates for merchants within just a few months of switching to our direct acquiring. We also opened our Tokyo office, led by our new General Manager, Noriko Sasaki.
• Saudi Arabia: Expanded domestic processing, including with the local scheme Mada, serving leading global brands like Carrefour and Lego and local brands such as Salla and Tamara.
• Canada: We completed all the certifications of our processing platform to launch direct acquiring in Canada in Q1 2025 to strengthen our offering across North America.
• Brazil: Preparing to launch direct acquiring with Visa, Mastercard, and PIX, supported by a new product and technology hub led by our General Manager, Juarez Borges Filho.

We expanded our card payout capabilities to the U.S., Singapore, and UAE, enabling direct transfers to Apple Pay Wallets and empowering merchants like Farfetch, GE Healthcare, Getty Images, Nespresso, and fintech innovators like Wise, Sunday, Zilch, American Express, and Blockchain.com, to offer instant, seamless payouts directly to customer cards.  

We added 30 new local payment methods—from SEPA Direct Debit and Bizum in Europe to Venmo in the US and GrabPay in Southeast Asia—and invested in local payment teams worldwide. We also became the first global digital payments provider to offer Octopus in Hong Kong, which is used by 98% of the region’s 7.5 million residents. 

Networked payment performance

We utilize AI, machine learning, and over 20 billion data points to optimize the entire payment flow process, relentlessly pursuing better performance and lower costs. And every optimization is deployed to all merchants, leveraging the power of the network, so every merchant benefits.  

• Vinted, the leading secondhand fashion marketplace, improved its performance by 4.15%, making more secondhand goods the first choice for consumers.  
• Papa Johns has seen a 6% higher acceptance rate on card transactions using Checkout.com, which means more pizza is brought to people on game night. 
• Delivery Hero saw a 1% improvement in local processing acceptance rates—ensuring their customers always receive a seamless ordering experience.
• And many other brands, including Farfetch, Puig, Sony, and Sunday, have seen average authorization rate uplifts of up to 8%

We deploy targeted issuer outreach and share data with Card Issuers to address payment challenges at source. In the US, we’ve partnered with two banks, who combined service c. 15% of the total US market volume, sharing our proprietary fraud scores to help reduce fraud and false positives in pursuit of better acceptance rates. 

Our Integration Health Dashboard helps merchant engineering teams resolve integration issues quickly, ensuring error-free transactions to reduce declines and increase acceptance rates. In early trials, early adopters saw an average 3% uplift through actionable insights from payload analysis.

Accelerating online conversion

We launched Flow, a customizable pre-built payment interface that merchants can embed directly into their checkout experience. With a single integration, merchants can accept payments using our global network of payment methods, removing the need for continuous updates to integrate new payment methods in a new market. Flow also meets industry standards like PCI 4.0 to help reduce the burden of compliance on businesses. 

With features like dynamic sorting to filter and display payment methods based on shopper details (location, currency, device) in over 20 languages, Flow has helped early adopters like Virgin Active and TalkTalk Telecom experience measurable uplifts of up to 4.8% on their acceptance rates with a 18.5% less authentication challenge rates and faster page load times of sub 200 ms. 

We’re expanding Flow’s Remember Me feature in 2025. This enhancement allows shoppers to save their payment details once and use them across all Checkout.com merchants on the network, eliminating repetitive data entry and further boosting conversion rates. 

Liberating digital payment data with Standalone Vault and Forward API  

Whether it’s PCI-DSS or the anticipated PSD3, the regulatory landscape in payments will continue to evolve. Our Standalone Vault provides a secure, centralized solution for storing and tokenizing payment credentials in line with PCI 4.0’s enhanced data security requirements, while Forward API allows merchants to route transactions with the provider of their choice, so they have the flexibility and control to maximize their performance. This enables businesses to meet complex compliance requirements while scaling their global payment operations efficiently. We have now entered beta deployments with early adopter merchants and are monitoring the impact on time savings and processing fees.  

Checkout Business Account

Launched in 2024, the Checkout Business Account is designed to optimize cash flow and reduce the time and cost of money in transit. For merchants, faster access to funds is critical—and we now provide same-day settlements in the local time zone, with two intraday and one early next-day settlement to a merchant’s bank account. We do this before Visa and Mastercard settle the funds with us. Merchants can also store, manage, and deploy funds directly within the Checkout.com platform. Features like funds pooling, automated and on-demand top-ups, and notifications on balance levels have together helped many customers including TapTapSend. In the coming months, we will offer competitive yields on balances and seamless expense management.

Simplifying the most complex digital payment flows 

Digital payments often involve intricate workflows, especially in sectors like Fintech and Travel. At Checkout.com, we’re integrating physical and virtual card issuing with acquiring, simplifying even the most complex flows.

• Holiday Extras: Replace manual bank transfers with virtual cards, reducing errors and streamlining operations.
• Sunday: Power payment flows for restaurants like Dishoom and The Hoxton, enabling Pre-Ordering, Pay at Table, and Click & Collect services.
• Sainsbury’s: Offers seamless in-store payments via its app, allowing customers to skip queues and pay directly through Checkout.com.

These are just a few examples of how we’re abstracting complexity from payments to deliver a better experience for merchants and their customers. As digital journeys increasingly shape in-person experiences, we remain focused solely on solving digital commerce challenges for merchants, obsessed with helping more businesses thrive in the digital economy. 

High-performance culture

At Checkout.com, all our technology, innovation, and discipline starts with our people. In 2024, we used a proportion of our own capital to repurchase shares, giving employees an opportunity for liquidity.  We expect another share buy back in 2025, which reflects the strength of our business and our belief in the people who make it all possible.

In 2024, we took deliberate steps to strengthen our culture and align it with our sharper focus: scaling responsibly while staying frugal to deliver maximum value to our merchants. Guided by twelve Operating Principles rooted in our values of Aspire, Excel, and Unite, we’ve rebuilt our high-performance culture. We returned to the office three days a week because we believe collaboration drives better outcomes for our merchants. And we welcomed over 200 new colleagues in 2024, bringing our team to 1,900 people across 19 offices. 

These efforts are already driving results. In 2024, our employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) increased by 24 points, and our Glassdoor rating rose to 3.9. A motivated and high-performing team isn’t just good for us—it’s critical for our merchants’ success. We expect a 15% increase in headcount to support our global operations.

In 2024, we also welcomed Alejandro Galán to our team. Ale is a world-class athlete and professional Padel player known for his tactical brilliance and relentless drive. Success in Padel is about great partnerships—just like in payments, you can’t do it alone. Together, we have set the ambitious goal of helping Padel be included in the 2032 Olympic Games.    

Looking ahead to 2025

Entering 2025, we remain focused on putting our customers first. Our priority is delivering better performance for digital enterprise merchants, chasing every basis point to help them thrive. This year, Forrester recognized Checkout.com with the highest score possible in the payment performance optimization category (5 out of 5) and ranked us among the top providers globally. 

Performance doesn’t stand still, and neither will we. In 2025, we’re targeting 30% growth and sustained profitability driven by product innovation, global expansion, and operational efficiency. We will continue to combine payment performance, rapid innovation, and exceptional service to create lasting value for our merchants—because in the race to keep you ahead, there is no finish line. 

We’re grateful to have you with us on this journey. 

We are Checkout.com. And we are where the world checks out.