Stripe Leads Massive Round in 'Fast'

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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.