Senior executive at UK payment company Checkout.com to leave

A senior executive at UK payment processing company Checkout.com is leaving the group, which was once Europe’s most valuable start-up.

Céline Dufétel, the company’s president and chief operating officer, was departing, according to people familiar with the matter. The news was announced internally on Tuesday, they said.

Dufétel joined Checkout’s New York office in 2021 from US asset manager T Rowe Price, where she was chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

Her departure from Checkout.com follows a turbulent period for the once high-flying start-up.

The company became Europe’s most valuable private technology business after securing funding from US investment group Tiger Global and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC at a $40bn valuation in early 2022.

But Checkout.com was forced to slash its valuation to $11bn in December that year amid a broad financial technology industry rout as rising interest rates hit the venture capital-backed sector.

Operating losses at Checkout.com’s London-registered entity more than tripled to $126mn in 2022, the latest year for which its UK filings are available, due to lower consumer spending amid surging inflation and a slowdown in cryptocurrency trading volumes.

Checkout’s revenue, which includes the fees it charges to merchants, fell to $246.3mn in 2022, down from $259.6mn in 2021.

The company, which is active in regions beyond Europe, including the US and Asia, said at its results in February that its UK accounts were not representative of the entire group.

Checkout.com said its fintech and crypto customers in particular had been hit by tougher macroeconomic conditions, as it highlighted “lower trading volumes observed particularly among emerging digital currency clients”.

The Financial Times reported in 2022 that the company had attracted regulatory scrutiny from French watchdog ACPR, which raised concerns about staffing levels in its compliance department.

Checkout.com was founded by Swiss businessman Guillaume Pousaz in 2012 as a tech-focused payments processing company, and it grew globally due to the boom in ecommerce.

Crypto trading shop eToro, crypto exchange Crypto.com and stablecoin provider Circle are among the company’s most high-profile customers.

A person familiar with Checkout.com said on Tuesday that the group was on track this year to be profitable at the level of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation.

Checkout.com did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Dufétel’s departure.