Dive Insight:

• Checkout.com, an online payments provider, rolled out its Payouts platform to help customers make payments in real-time directly to eligible recipients' cards and bank accounts.

• The platform will allow real-time payments to more than 4 billion cards in over 174 countries, and payments to local bank accounts in around 40 countries.

• The Payouts payment platform will also facilitate global merchants' cross-border real-time payments while minimizing currency fluctuations.

Dive Brief:

Checkout.com's new Payout product aims to bring real-time payments to all market verticals. The new single application programing interface (API) integration can process payments in real-time, enabling digital wallet, travel, insurance, online content, and gig economy payments to be made faster.

The value of real-time payments transactions surged to $92 trillion in 2020 compared to $69 trillion in 2019, a 32.8% increase, according to research by payments software company ACI Worldwide. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for real-time payments is an expected 12% by 2025, the report stated.

"Influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the real-time payments share of all transactions doubled in 2020 [in the U.S.]," the report stated. "The forecast for the five-year 2020-25 timeframe is for a CAGR of 43.4%, or 6.2 [billion] additional transactions."

The payment platform will enable merchants and individuals to transfer funds in real-time while reducing costs on cross-border payments, Checkout.com said.

The London based-company's new platform can also transact multi-currency financial transfers like remittance and global merchant payments in real-time by leveraging interbank foreign exchange rate sources, reducing exposure to currency fluctuations.

"Our customers are able to query our foreign exchange rate tables in real time, and they will be able to know exactly the quote of foreign exchange rates," said Yael Barak, vice president of payments product management and strategy Checkout.com. "If you decide that this rate is maybe too high for you and you want to hold and wait, you can query the service again in an hour or two hours and three hours."

Checkout.com also leverages its partnership with Visa, Mastercard and banking networks to provide real-time cross-border payments.

"We use a network of bank accounts that we can access and we control so that we can take decisions on how we want to move funds between those bank accounts," Barak said.

The Payouts platform was launched in early 2020 as a beta model for companies including Western Union, Revolut and Transferwise, whose business models revolve around remittance and global payments. Early adopters of the platform and merchants have experienced a 600% increase in transaction volume year-over-year (YoY) for their pay-to-card operations, the company said in a press release. The company later expanded the platform's capabilities to incorporate B2B, P2P and B2C payments in real time. Checkout.com plans to expand the number of countries and currencies in which it can make real-time transfers later this year, Barak said.

Earlier this year, Checkout.com closed a $450 million Series C fundraise, which tripled its valuation to $15 billion. The company saw payment volume triple on its platform while adding clients like cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, fintech company Klarna and restaurant chain Pizza Hut on its platform in 2020.

Checkout.com established its North American headquarters in New York City after it raised the new funds.