Fast, the world’s fastest online login and checkout experience, today announced a $102 million Series B funding round led by Addition and Stripe, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures, Susa Ventures, Sugar Capital and Jaren Glover. The investment brings Fast’s total funding to $124 million, following its $20 million Series A raised in March 2020 and a $2.5 million pre-seed round from October 2019.
After the successful launch of its flagship Fast Checkout product in September 2020, Fast is now available to millions of WooCommerce and BigCommerce sellers, with plans to expand to numerous e-commerce platforms and major online retailers in the coming months. With this latest round, Fast will double down on product expansion, reaching even more sellers through new use cases such as subscriptions and one-click online media purchases. Fast will also move into more markets outside of the United States. Additionally, the funding will power continued hiring of top talent – Fast grew from a team of just two Co-Founders at the start of 2020 to 90 people today and has plans to reach more than 200 employees by the end of 2021.
“The positive response we’ve received from online sellers who have installed Fast Checkout has been overwhelming, and the funding we are announcing today will enable Fast to meet the demand to bring one-click buying to even more e-commerce stores,” said Fast CEO and Co-Founder Domm Holland. “We are grateful to work with investors who share our vision to radically improve the online buying process.”
“With the continued increase in online shopping, retailers are realizing the value of a quick and simple payment process,” said Lee Fixel, Founder of Addition. “Fast significantly enhances the e-commerce customer experience, which is why it is becoming the preferred checkout platform for digital retail.”
Fast Checkout offers a one-click purchasing process that takes less than a second, without requiring a password or manually inputting information for every order. Buyers are automatically signed up for Fast after their first purchase, making future shopping effortless on any website with Fast. Sellers can also place Checkout on individual product pages, enabling buyers to forego the cumbersome shopping cart process altogether. This groundbreaking approach has meant sellers deploying Fast Checkout have seen dramatic increases in sales. After installing Fast Checkout, Saddleback Leather saw its overall website conversion soar by 65%.
Holland, the world’s fastest CEO, created Fast after seeing his wife’s grandmother struggle to buy groceries online. After his son was briefly hospitalized, what started as a quick task to help the family became a complicated burden when she couldn’t remember or reset her password. Fast was developed to eliminate the confusing and tedious online shopping process that creates horrible online shopping experiences.
The 2020 e-commerce surge is expected to have a permanent impact on online shopping behavior. Online sales skyrocketed as the global e-commerce market reached $3.9 trillion and U.S. 2020 online holiday shopping increased 32.2% YoY. And exponential growth will continue – e-commerce sales still only account for 14.3% of all U.S. retail sales. Shopping cart abandonment remains a huge problem with up to 80% of all online carts left deserted. With Fast, sellers can harness the rising volume of online shopping while ensuring the checkout process does not hinder sales.
