Stripe Leads Massive Round in 'Fast'
This story is brought to you by The Daily Upside. For more crisp and insightful content, you can sign up for the free Daily Upside newsletter here.
You can discard the rumors: San Francisco's tech community is alive and well.
Just a few months after launching its first product, San-Francisco based startup Fast announced a $102 million funding round on Tuesday.
What is Fast? For starters, it’s not a weight-loss tool. Instead, Fast helps enable seamless online shopping experiences by letting consumers pay with a “one-click checkout.” CEO Domm Holland likened Fast to Amazon’s “Buy Now” feature, which allows shoppers to avoid visiting the shopping cart altogether.
The Value Proposition: is abundantly clear. Internet users tend to get distracted, resulting in “abandoned carts,” which — for an e-commerce company — means lost revenue.
Fast is not alone in wanting to tackle the market opportunity:
- In late December, Bolt, which provides online checkout, identity and payments services, raised a $75 million extension to its Series C round.
- In mid-January Checkout.com, which is working on a “one-stop shop" for all things related to payments, raised $450 million at a $15 billion valuation.
- Just one day after the Checkout.com raise, Rapyd announced it raised $300 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. Rapyd provides fintech services via an API and supports global eCommerce payments.
The Takeaway: Fast's round was led by fintech giant Stripe, one of the most valuable unicorns in the world.
