How to win in payments-as-a-service: take $60M & go international

There’s currently a huge race in the payments-as-a-service space. Companies are doing everything from accepting Bitcoin to giving out free services to startups and everything in between to differentiate themselves from the pack. 2Checkout’s strategy seems to be going for the international market.

2Checkout, a company that provides payments services to merchants around the world, announced today it has brought in the final chunk of its $60 million funding round. Chicago Growth Partners and Trident Capital led the round, with additional participation from other undisclosed investors.

Although the company has been around since 1999 and is now serving more than 22,000 merchants, this is actually 2Checkout’s first round of investment. The company says it’s planning to use the funding to boost its global expansion.

2Checkout has been focusing a lot of its efforts on making its products as cross-border friendly as possible. For example, its service automatically personalizes and localizes the checkout process for each merchant’s customer based on their location, including language, currency, and payment methods.

“The global e-commerce market is massive and continues to increase at a double-digit rate of annual growth. Online payments are a critical component of e-commerce and the providers in the space are consolidating into a few global platforms. 2Checkout will emerge as one of the global leaders in payments,” said Chicago Growth Partners managing partner Devin Mathews in a statement on the news.

“Now is the perfect time to help scale 2Checkout to the next level.”

In addition to providing payments processing for merchants, 2Checkouts is the back-end payment processor for merchant banks such as Brink’s.

“2Checkout already has a global customer footprint and a solid brand reputation among merchant banks, payment networks, online retailers and partners like Brink’s, which is a multi-billion dollar company,” said Trident Capital managing director Don Dixon in the same release.

“No other payments processor can make those claims.”

2Checkout is not alone in the payments-as-a-service space however. Competitors have not only been carving out solid positions in the space, but Stripe, Braintree, and several others have already been expanding internationally.

2Checkout is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and says it has more than 50,000 merchants approved for its services. It supports transactions in 196 countries through 8 payment methods, 26 currencies, and 15 languages.