Credit cards payment processor Checkout.com views crypto as a meaningful space for merchant relationships but needs to continue to focus on regulatory growth, according to Céline Dufétel, president and COO of the company, who spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt.
“We serve crypto exchanges, we don’t actually touch crypto,” Dufétel said. “It’s the same service we provide to e-commerce, streaming or gaming merchants.”
But “a little under 4%” of Checkout.com’s total processing volume comes from crypto companies, which Dufétel calls “a modest part of the platform.”
In January 2022, Checkout.com was valued at $40 billion but by the end of the year, it crushed its internal valuation 72.5% to $11 billion, according to a Financial Times report. Changes in valuations for fintech companies aren’t “a-ha moments,” Dufétel said.
“Checkout isn’t immune to change in valuations, either. For us, what matters is focusing on the long term…and driving sustainable growth. That’s why this year we were so excited we grew 40% in that vertical with fintech and e-commerce with our merchants.”
The 11-year-old company powers payments for a number of segments like e-commerce, fintech, gaming and a handful of crypto companies like MoonPay, Crypto.com, Blockchain.com, Circle and OKCoin, to name a few. In August, it made headlines for cutting ties with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, over concerns about the crypto firm’s alleged issues with anti-money laundering, sanctions and compliance controls.
Given that Checkout.com is a regulated business, it takes risk management “very seriously,” Dufétel said. The choice to end its contract with Binance came as a result of focusing on its “long term decisions.”
After the news surfaced, Dufétel said other crypto clients understood their choice. “We’re very close to our clients, they know why we make decisions and they know we have long term partnerships with them and they know why we have to make decisions as a business.”
Their commitment to growing the web3 world isn’t ending. “We believe in the utility of web3 and blockchain long term,” Dufétel said. “We also do believe the movement toward regulation is healthy and much needed.”
As for the road ahead, Dufétel said that the company is not raising right now. It was bootstrapped from its founding until 2019 when it began to take outside funding. “It was about accelerating the growth of the business, which we feel good about now. We don’t have a need to [right now].”
As conversations around IPOs heat up, thanks to Instacart going public, Dufétel also shared that the company is “very interested” in watching what transpires there, but has “no pressure to go public.”
“At some point, yes, but not in the near future.”