Bolt provides a one-click checkout product that bundles payments and fraud protection and lets shoppers create a single account to use across a network of hundreds of Bolt merchant brands. The company also integrates embedded commerce technology following its acquisition of Tipser to enable direct checkout on any digital surface. Bolt is investing the new capital to hire talent, pursue strategic acquisitions and expand into Europe, while rolling out new consumer and social-commerce products to place its checkout across channels. Operational momentum cited in the article includes an 80% increase in gross merchandise value per merchant, 180% growth in accounts over 2020 and 200% year‑over‑year transaction growth; Bolt projects 100 million shoppers could join its network in the next 18 months. The company employs more than 550 people working remotely across over 200 cities and is focused on unbundling the Amazon buying experience (fast shipping, returns, tracking, membership benefits) for merchants. Bolt provides a federated One-Click checkout experience platform that connects registered shoppers to a cross-brand network of retailers, enabling fast, safe, and easy checkout on any device. The company addresses checkout complexity, fraud detection, and digital wallets, and claims conversion rates 50% higher than guest checkout. Bolt also states it can cover 100% of fraudulent chargebacks, underscoring confidence in its fraud-detection technology. Bolt partners with hundreds of retailers, has thousands more coming online, and has crossed 10 million registered shoppers. The company was named to the 2021 Forbes Fintech 50 list and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Bolt has stated plans to bring one-third of all U.S. shoppers onto its platform by 2022 and has raised over $600 million in total funding to date. Bolt’s core product is a checkout platform it says is faster than industry averages and drives higher conversion; it also offers integrated payments, fraud protection and shopper accounts to power personalization and trust. The company is a hybrid payments-and-software business, generating revenue from payment processing and SaaS fees for services like fraud protection. Bolt reported processing around $1 billion in transactions this year (roughly 3.5x 2019 GMV) and said it has grown shopper accounts from about 450,000 in December to roughly 4.5 million now, targeting 30 million next year. Management projects roughly 3x GMV in 2021 (about $3 billion) and attributes part of its growth to an agreement with Authentic Brands Group. Bolt plans to use new capital to handle market demand, move upmarket and expand engineering and sales support for larger customers. The product and account growth are intended to feed more data into its anti-fraud and checkout personalization tools. Bolt is a San Francisco-based checkout experience platform that provides a frontend checkout and a full stack of features and integrations that checkout touches. It integrates with ecommerce tools, shopping carts, and payments processors including BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, PayPal, Apple Pay, AfterPay, Stripe, and Braintree. Customers include BadgleyMischka.com, Cariloha, Dita, Hyperice, PuppySpot and POLYWOOD. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Ryan Breslow. Bolt raised $50m in a Series C and intends to use the funds to expand operations and its business reach. The financing brought the company’s total funding to nearly $140m. Bolt provides an integrated checkout platform that combines payment processing and fraud detection to streamline the buying experience for online retailers. Its dynamic checkout optimizations and conversion-focused fraud tools helped customers realize more than $25 million in new revenue. The platform has processed an annualized payment volume of over $1 billion and handled more than 1.5 million transactions. Bolt has grown from ten people working out of a loft in San Francisco to more than 125 employees across three offices. The company sells an all-in-one alternative to piecing together multiple solutions for checkout and payments. Bolt plans to use new funding to scale engineering, add enterprise functionality for large retailers, partner with additional eCommerce tools, build advanced shopping-experience features, and expand global capabilities.

Total raised

$554M

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Series E

Latest activity

Jan 2022