London-based payments fintech firm, Checkout.com, is offering employees a method of cashing in their shares in acquiring them.
According to the London-headquartered payments platform, it intends to introduce a share buyback program to its employees on Friday to “provide them with a path to liquidity.”
Checkout.com stated that the new internal valuation of $12 billion is on which the share buyback program is grounded. Despite its internal valuation, it is a substantial decrease relative to the previous fundraising round.
It has become a unicorn with a valuation of $40 billion in a $1 billion funding round in 2022. Thus, the reports claimed that it had reduced its internal valuation to $11 billion in the same year.
In their share incentive program, Checkout.com states that the value of its workers is monitored regularly. The fintech has been competing with other payment service providers, including Stripe, Adyen, and PayPal. The company generates billions of dollars in transactions annually on behalf of Coinbase, Pizza Hut, and H&M.
These share sales have become a growing trend, especially among startups, as a means to provide liquidity to long-term employees and other investors, especially as the tech companies remain private for multiple years of declining initial offerings.
Checkout.com claims to be currently on a path to reach an annual growth of 30 percent core net revenue and is predicting an annual volume of e-commerce payments of $300 billion.
In a press release, the CEO of Checkout.com, Guillaume Pousaz, said, “We are relentlessly focused on growth and innovation, particularly with the impact of AI and the expected rise of agentic commerce.”
In recent months, several other private fintech firms have chosen to give employees the option to sell shares.
In February, Stripe proposed a tender offer where the employees and early investors could sell shares at a valuation of $91.5 billion. Earlier this month, it provided employees with the opportunity to sell shares through the secondary market at a valuation of $75 billion.
