US-based fintech major Stripe Inc. on Wednesday said it has entered into a deal to acquire Bengaluru-based payment reconciliation software provider Recko for an undisclosed amount.
This marks Stripe’s first acquisition in India, which has been actively hiring in the country across functions of product, engineering, policy. Stripe first stepped into India back in 2017, and continues to ramp its investment in local data architecture in India.
As part of the deal, Recko’s entire team will join Stripe’s remote engineering hub, helping to build and scale Stripe’s products globally. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions with Recko users continuing to use the company’s products directly, Stripe said in a statement on Wednesday evening.
The move is in line with Stripe expanding beyond its core offering of payment acceptance and looking at payment reconciliations apart from offering payment infrastructure to businesses. At present, Stripe offers products including payment links, billing and subscription software as well as online invoicing to its users.
Through the acquisition, Stripe will look to add another tool which will help businesses automate the collection of transaction data from their financial systems and non-Stripe payment processors.
It will also help businesses match thousands of individual transactions with just a few clicks, saving finance teams manual reconciliation tasks while also helping them account for currency differences and chargebacks.
“Payments reconciliation shouldn’t be a mild headache that balloons into a migraine as a company grows—it should be an easy, highly automated process. Stripe helps millions of businesses around the world streamline their revenue management—from subscriptions and invoicing to revenue recognition and bookkeeping. With Recko, we’ll automate their payments reconciliation, a critical input into their overall financial health,” said Will Gaybrick, chief product officer, Stripe.
Payments processing startup Stripe is the highest valued venture-backed private company in the US and was recently valued at $95 billion in April this year, after closing its $600 million raise. It has till date raised more than $2.2 billion in venture funding.
“Joining Stripe is a perfect next chapter for Recko, and we can’t wait to help grow the GDP (gross domestic product) of the internet by removing the burden of reconciliation complexity. Internet businesses need new financial tools that can scale with their growth and automate the tasks required to produce an accurate picture of their financial health,” commented Saurya Prakash Sinha, chief executive officer and co-founder of Recko.
Four-year Recko provides artificial intelligence-powered reconciliation of digital transactions, and counts Deliveroo, Meesho, PharmEasy, as customers. The company has raised $7 million till date from the likes of Prime Venture Partners and Locus Ventures.
“Today's news is a testament to the quality of engineering and products being conceived and developed in the Indian startup ecosystem - and it's great to see these innovations going global. At Prime, we have been privileged to work with Saurya, Prashant, and the Recko team from the very beginning and wish them the very best," said Sanjay Swamy, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners.
