US fintech Stripe acquires Recko in first Indian acquisition

Stripe will begin integrating Recko into its wider payments stack, but also notes that existing Recko users will be able to continue using it as before

Stripe, the fintech out of San Francisco that is valued at $95 billion, is making another acquisition to expand the services it offers alongside its core payments product. The company is acquiring Recko, which has built a platform that lets businesses track and automate payments reconciliation, covering both outgoing and incoming payments and the full ecosystem of inbound and outbound payment sources and receivers. Like Stripe itself, Recko leans heavily on APIs to integrate and work with different data sources.

Recko is based out of Bangalore, India, and significantly this will be Stripe’s first acquisition in the country when the acquisition officially closes based on customary closing conditions.

Founded in 2017, Recko had been seeing a lot of traction internationally, with Deliveroo, Meesho and PharmEasy among its wider list of customers.

Stripe will begin integrating Recko into its wider payments stack, but also notes that existing Recko users will be able to continue using it as before. It seems the plan is not to limit any of the functionality of the product, which today is partly so effective because of how it precisely works across so much of the fragmentation in the world of accounting and finance.

The acquisition is the latest move from Stripe to build out more services beyond basic payments, a way of capturing more revenue from existing customers, and more customers overall, in particular those using platforms that let them handle accounting and other work that goes hand-in-hand with taking or making payments.

Earlier this year, Stripe acquired Bouncer to integrate card authentication and TaxJar to bring in automatic sales tax tools. International acquisitions —including Paystack in Nigeria and Touchtech in Ireland — have also been made strategically both to serve a wider network of territories and to tap into local expertise in those markets.

Other features and products launched by Stripe to cover other aspects of the payments process include revenue recognition, billing and invoicing services.

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, said Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s chief product officer, in a blog post announcing the deal. 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.