SumUp Garners $300 Million in New Funding, Signaling Growth in Merchant Payments

SumUp, which provides payments services to roughly four million small businesses in Europe, the Americas, and Australia, has raised more than $300 million in its latest round of raising capital.

Financial Officer Hermione McKee told CNBC that the fresh capital gives the company “more firepower to act on opportunities that we see arising over the course of the next two years.”

The company has seen substantial growth in recent years, expanding into 36 countries—and with the latest round of funding, it could start looking into Asia and Africa as well. SumUp has also indicated that it will be introducing more services in addition to its card readers and other point-of-sale tools, invoicing services, loyalty technology, and more.

SumUp has been ramping up its payments services, recently launching Apple’s Tap to Pay feature in the UK and the Netherlands, and upgrading its existing point-of-sale systems. It has also expanded into lending, with a service that enables a merchant to apply for a cash advance or business loan up to a certain limit, based on their card sales revenues. All this followed on SumUp’s acquisition of loyalty technology firm Fivestars in 2021.

A Struggling Industry

SumUp competes primarily with Jack Dorsey’s payments business Block, formerly known as Square, FIS’ WorldPay, Stripe, and Adyen. But this business is tough right now. SumUp says that its customer base currently totals around four million, which is the same figure the company cited two years ago. PayPal and Square, two U.S. companies that compete directly with SumUp, have seen their stock prices drop precipitously since 2022, and Stripe has seen its valuation nearly cut in half this year.

Given that landscape, SumUp’s $300 million is even more noteworthy. It could be significant for the merchant payments industry as a whole.

“This additional round of funding may turn out to be unique to SumUp, but it might also be the beginning of fintechs and payments firms gaining renewed access to capital that had largely dried up in the past year,” said Daniel Keyes, Senior Analyst of Merchant Services at Javelin Strategy & Research. “If this signals a shift in how fintechs and payments companies behave in regard to acquisitions and investment, we could see more M&A activity and internal investments in 2024 and beyond.”