British fintech startup SumUp has raised a fresh funding round that brings the company valuation close to $8.6 billion.

British payment startup SumUp, a producer of mobile PoS and small card readers, on Monday, announced it had recently raised 285 million euros (equivalent to $306.6 million) in a round of funding that now values the company at $8.6 billion.

Founded in 2012, the fintech company has recently accelerated its expansion efforts. Since 2020, SumUp has enriched its product suite with Invoicing, Gift Cards, Mobile Payments, and most recently the business lending service that enables merchants to apply for a cash advance or business loans up to a limit based on their card sales revenues.

In addition, SumUp launched new point-of-sale offerings, e.g. self-service retail kiosks that let customers order goods in brick-and-mortar stores at their own pace using a touchscreen interface.

The company’s existing point-of-sale systems have been recently upgraded with its POS Lite and POS Pros countertop systems that can be paired with SumUp’s card readers. Besides, SumUp recently launched Apple’s Tap to Pay feature in the U.K. and the Netherlands, turning a vendor’s iPhone into a mobile POS system using a smartphone app.

The fresh funding is expected to fuel the company’s international expansion as well. This August, SumUp launched in Australia which became its 36th market globally. The next destinations for the ambitious firms are countries across Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Looking for new opportunities, SumUp also plans to explore more merger and acquisition (M&A) deals to help it drive its expansion abroad.

“M&A is always something that’s on the table. We have expanded into new geographies in the past with M&A. That’s something we’re always assessing. We have experience in both building an ecosystem as well as buying. And both of these things are available to us, obviously, yes, this just gives us greater optionality and the ability to move quickly, should we see the right opportunity arise.”

Hermione McKee, SumUp Chief Financial Officer

The $300 million funding round was led by Sixth Street Growth, while the existing investor Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, fintech investment firm Fin Capital, and debt financing firm Liquidity Group, participated as well. The amount of money raised mostly consisted of equity, with a small portion of the funds received in the form of debt.