Checkout

What is Checkout.com

Checkout.com is a global payment solutions provider that offers an end-to-end platform for businesses to process online payments. Founded in 2012 by Guillaume Pousaz and headquartered in London, UK, the company acts as a gateway, acquirer, and processor all in one. This unified structure simplifies payment operations for merchants. The core purpose of Checkout.com is to help large-scale businesses and enterprises manage, move, and optimize their money across the globe. Its main functionality revolves around providing a single, integrated API to accept a wide range of payment methods, improve transaction success rates using data and AI, and protect against fraud, all while ensuring regulatory compliance.

Checkout.com Features

Checkout.com provides a suite of products designed to handle the entire payment lifecycle for businesses.

• Global Payment Processing (Connect): Allows businesses to accept payments from customers worldwide. It supports major credit and debit cards, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, and numerous local payment methods through a single API integration or hosted payment pages.
• Payins and Payouts (Move): Facilitates both collecting payments from customers (payins) and sending funds to sellers, partners, or users (payouts). This is essential for marketplaces, gig economy platforms, and other businesses that need to manage complex fund flows.
• Fraud and Risk Management (Protect): Utilizes an AI-powered engine and customizable rule sets to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions in real-time. It also includes tools for identity verification and helps businesses meet compliance standards like PSD2's Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).
• Payment Performance Optimization (Boost): This feature, known as Intelligent Acceptance, uses machine learning to analyze transaction data and optimize routing. This helps increase the rate of successful transactions, which directly translates to more revenue for the business.
• Money Movement Controls (Manage): Provides a centralized dashboard for businesses to monitor their payment operations. Users can track transactions, manage disputes, reconcile finances, and get detailed reports and analytics on their payment performance across different currencies and regions.

Checkout.com Pricing Plans

Checkout.com primarily offers a Custom Pricing model tailored to the specific needs of each business. There are no standard, publicly listed pricing tiers. The final cost is determined after a consultation with their sales team and depends on several factors:

• Transaction Volume: Higher volumes typically result in lower per-transaction fees.
• Business Model: The type of industry and associated risk level can influence pricing.
• Geographic Regions: Processing payments in different countries and currencies affects the cost.
• Payment Methods: The mix of payment methods used by customers can impact fees.

This model is best suited for large, established businesses and enterprises that require a bespoke payment solution. The pricing is often based on an Interchange++ model, which provides transparency by breaking down the cost into the interchange fee, the card scheme fee, and Checkout.com's markup.

Checkout.com Free Plan

Checkout.com does not offer a free plan or a self-service free trial. Its services are designed for large-scale businesses, and the onboarding process is sales-led. To explore the platform, interested businesses must contact the sales team to request a demo and discuss their specific requirements. During this process, they can get a sandbox account to test the API and integrations before committing to a contract.

How to use Checkout.com

Getting started with Checkout.com involves a consultative process designed for enterprise clients.

1. Contact Sales: The first step is to reach out to the Checkout.com sales team through their website to schedule a consultation.
2. Undergo Onboarding: After discussing your business needs, you will go through an application and underwriting process to get your merchant account approved.
3. Choose an Integration Method: Select the best way to connect to the platform. You can use their unified API for full control, mobile SDKs for in-app payments, or pre-built plugins for popular ecommerce platforms.
4. Integrate and Test: Your development team will use the provided API keys and extensive documentation to integrate the payment processing into your website or application. You can use the sandbox environment to test the entire workflow.
5. Configure Your Account: In the Checkout.com dashboard, you can configure settings such as accepted payment methods, fraud detection rules, and notification preferences.
6. Go Live: Once testing is complete and you are satisfied with the integration, you can switch to your live API keys and begin processing real transactions from customers.

Pros and Cons of Checkout.com

Pros:

• Unified Platform: Acts as a gateway, acquirer, and processor, which simplifies vendor management and can reduce costs.
• High Performance: Its Intelligent Acceptance feature uses AI to significantly improve payment success rates.
• Global Reach: Offers local acquiring in over 50 countries, reducing cross-border fees and improving authorization rates.
• Robust API: Provides a powerful and well-documented API that gives developers great flexibility and control.
• Advanced Fraud Protection: The customizable fraud detection engine offers strong security against malicious transactions.

Cons:

• Not for Small Businesses: The platform and pricing are designed for large enterprises, making it unsuitable for startups or small merchants.
• No Public Pricing: The lack of transparent pricing tiers makes it difficult to estimate costs without contacting sales.
• Complex Onboarding: The sales-led process can be longer and more involved compared to self-service platforms like Stripe.
• Steeper Learning Curve: The extensive features and customization options can be complex for teams without dedicated developer resources.

Checkout.com Integrations

Checkout.com offers a powerful API for custom integrations and also provides pre-built plugins and extensions for major ecommerce platforms and services.

• Shopify Integration: Allows Shopify merchants to connect their store to Checkout.com to process payments directly on-site.
• WooCommerce Integration: A plugin for WordPress-based stores to easily add Checkout.com as a payment gateway.
• Magento (Adobe Commerce) Integration: An extension for Magento stores to leverage Checkout.com's global payment processing capabilities.
• BigCommerce Integration: Enables BigCommerce users to integrate with Checkout.com for seamless payment acceptance.
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration: Provides a certified cartridge for businesses using Salesforce's ecommerce platform.

Checkout.com Alternatives

1. Adyen: A direct competitor with a very similar all-in-one platform model. Adyen also targets large, global enterprises and offers a unified solution for online, in-store, and mobile payments.
2. Stripe: Known for its developer-friendly API and strong documentation. Stripe serves businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises, and offers a more accessible self-service model for smaller companies.
3. Braintree: A PayPal service that provides a robust payment gateway. It is popular with businesses of various sizes and offers easy access to PayPal, Venmo, and traditional card payments through a single integration.
4. Worldpay from FIS: A traditional and one of the largest payment processors globally. It offers a vast range of payment services for enterprise-level clients, with a strong focus on both online and offline transactions.

Checkout.com API

Yes, Checkout.com provides a comprehensive and powerful API that is central to its platform. The API allows developers to integrate payment processing deeply into their applications and websites. Developers can find extensive documentation, API references, and tutorials on the Checkout.com developer portal.

To get API keys, a business must first sign up for a merchant account through the sales process. Once the account is approved, both sandbox (for testing) and live (for production) API keys are made available in the merchant dashboard.

Here is a simple example of using cURL to create a payment session with the Checkout.com API:

curl https://api.sandbox.checkout.com/payments \
    -H "Authorization: sk_sbox_..." \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{
          "source": {
            "type": "token",
            "token": "tok_..."
          },
          "amount": 1000,
          "currency": "USD",
          "reference": "ORDER123"
        }'

Checkout.com Affiliate Program

Checkout.com does not have a traditional, public affiliate program where individuals can sign up and earn a commission per referral. Instead, it operates a Partner Program aimed at agencies, technology providers, and venture capital firms. Partners can collaborate with Checkout.com to refer clients, build integrated solutions, or offer payment services to their portfolio companies. The benefits and commercial terms of this program are customized for each partner. If you are interested in becoming a partner, you should contact their partnership team directly through their website to discuss a potential collaboration.