- Fast — one of the world’s fastest online login and checkout experience — announced a $102 million Series B funding round
Fast — one of the world’s fastest online login and checkout experience — 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. And 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.
Following 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. And 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 is going to also move into more markets outside of the US. Plus the funding will power continued hiring of top talent. Fast has grown 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.
Fast Checkout offers a one-click purchasing process that takes under than a second without requiring a password or manually inputting information for every order. And 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, thus enabling buyers to forego the shopping cart process altogether. And this groundbreaking approach has meant sellers deploying Fast Checkout have seen dramatic increases in sales. Following the installation of Fast Checkout, Saddleback Leather saw its overall website conversion soar by 65%.
Holland had created Fast after seeing his wife’s grandmother struggle to buy groceries online. And 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 for eliminating the confusing and tedious online shopping process that creates horrible online shopping experiences.
The 2020 e-commerce surge is expected to have a major impact on online shopping behavior. And online sales skyrocketed as the global e-commerce market reached $3.9 trillion and U.S. 2020 online holiday shopping increased 32.2% year-over-year. And exponential growth will continue as 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 incompleted. Through Fast, sellers can harness the rising volume of online shopping while ensuring the checkout process does not hinder sales.
KEY QUOTES:
“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. We are grateful to work with investors who share our vision to radically improve the online buying process.”
— Fast CEO and Co-Founder Domm Holland
“With the continued increase in online shopping, retailers are realizing the value of a quick and simple payment process. Fast significantly enhances the e-commerce customer experience, which is why it is becoming the preferred checkout platform for digital retail.”
— Lee Fixel, Founder of Addition
