E-commerce online payment processor ReCharge raised $277 million in growth capital, reaching a post-money valuation of $2.1 billion. The round was led by venture capital firms Summit Partners, ICONIQ Growth, and Bain Capital Ventures.
ReCharge, founded in 2014, was self-funded for more than five years before accepting outside funding. ReCharge Payments has announced the appointment of Andrew Collins, Managing Director at Summit Partners, to its Board of Directors; Yoonkee Sull, Partner at ICONIQ Growth, and Aaref Hilaly, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, will also join ReCharge as Board Observers.
“Oisin [O’Connor] and Mike [Flynn] have bootstrapped the business for several years, and really, really focused on building the best product for their merchants and their customer,” Sull said, explaining why ReCharge was attractive as an investment.
Compared to other, more generic payment processors, Sull says that ReCharge’s singular focus on building for e-commerce merchants was a “massive differentiator.”
Oisin O’Connor, CEO of ReCharge, says the company plans to use the funding for “building out product and engineering, improving existing product lines, international expansion, supporting integrations into more systems, and building out [ReCharge’s] market team.”
ReCharge has now processed over $5.3 billion in transactions, more than doubled annual recurring revenues from 2019 to 2020, and includes more than 300 employees across 10 countries. It has served over 20 million subscribing brands including Harry’s, Oatly, Fiji Water, Billie and Native.
Compared to payment processors such as Stripe, O’Connor says ReCharge is more focused on providing applications to merchants that help them manage their ongoing subscription business, which includes providing toolsets to manage and improve the customer purchasing experience as well as analytics.
“We actually work very closely with Stripe and other payment processors,” O’Connor said, highlighting ReCharge’s focus within the market, “so with the competitors we do go against, we have taken an API, product-first focus, and there’s a reason why we have become the market leader in this category, because we are product-centric.”
ReCharge built its largely bootstrapped business upon a completely remote-first framework, long before the pandemic forced many businesses online. O’Connor says that the most important factor for making a remote business work is trust in the culture and team members.
Call it old fashioned, but we’re focused on our customers, taking care of them, and focused on our team. members.”
Oisin O’Connor, CEO of Recharge Payments
“You have to either have a remote culture or an office culture,” he said, explaining how ReCharge was built compared to more traditional companies, “because if you have a culture where the majority go into the office, the remote people will always feel left out.”
“It makes total sense, so you have to commit to one or the other. I think remote cultures are amazing, but you have to have trust. You have to trust your team members and have that faith.”
O’Connor dismissed the possibility of a near future IPO for ReCharge, stating a focus on day-to-day growth and improvement.
“Right now we are focused on just building a great company,” he said. “Call it old fashioned, but we’re focused on our customers, taking care of them, and focused on our team. members.”
“That’s the focus and this is just going to help us do that at a higher level.”