Guillaume Pousaz Built a $15B Company You’ve Never Heard Of
In 2005, a promising economics student at one of Switzerland’s most prestigious universities made a decision that baffled everyone
In 2005, a promising economics student at one of Switzerland’s most prestigious universities made a decision that baffled everyone around him. Guillaume Pousaz dropped out of HEC Lausanne and moved to California to become a surfer. Twenty years later, that same person is worth an estimated $7.8 billion according to Forbes, ranking as the 5th richest person in the UK and running one of Europe’s most valuable private companies. This is the extraordinary story of how tragedy, persistence, and an eye for overlooked opportunities transformed a college dropout into a fintech titan.
Born on the outskirts of Geneva in 1981, Guillaume Pousaz showed early signs of brilliance. Starting to code from the early age of eight, he was driven by curiosity and a love for both art and mathematics. As a teenager, he was talented enough at snowboarding to appear in magazines, but his true calling lay in technology and business.
After studying mathematical engineering at the prestigious École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, he enrolled in economics at HEC Lausanne with dreams of becoming an investment banker. He even received a job offer from Citibank London. But during his third year, life threw him a devastating curveball.
The Tragedy That Changed Everything
In 2005, Guillaume Pousaz’s father was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. This tragedy forced the young student into serious soul-searching about what really mattered in life. Instead of pursuing his banking dreams, he made a decision that seemed completely irrational to everyone who knew him: he dropped out of university and moved to California to surf.
“I was at a point where I was very curious and adventurous,” Guillaume Pousaz later explained. “That led me to California. I was excited by the creative, technology-first Californian mindset (as well as the surfing!).”
But this wasn’t just about catching waves. During his time in California, he discovered something that would shape his entire future: the world of payments. Working at International Payments Consultants, he gained his first exposure to the industry and immediately saw both the potential and the problems with existing systems. “I didn’t find payments, payments found me,” he would later say.
From Surfboards to Startups
Guillaume Pousaz threw himself into learning the payments industry from scratch, working 70-80 hours per week. After two years as an employee, he left with the company’s head of sales to start his first business. In 2007, they founded NetMerchant, a company specializing in selling European currencies to US merchants.
“Obviously, we had nearly no capital and no technology,” Guillaume Pousaz recalled. “We were purely contract sellers to banks.” The partnership didn’t last long due to different ambitions, but it taught him valuable lessons about choosing business partners with aligned goals.
In 2009, he made a bold move that would set the foundation for his empire. He found a small Mauritius-based company called SMS Pay and made them an audacious offer: “You know how to code the payment gateway, but I know how to drive business. If you give me the code, I will guarantee to pay you three years’ salary.”
It worked. He acquired SMS Pay for $300,000 paid over three years and renamed it Opus Payments, setting it up in Singapore to help Hong Kong businesses process payments globally.
Building Without Investors
The early days weren’t easy. Then in 2011, everything changed when Opus signed a deal with DealExtreme, a Chinese e-commerce website, making the company profitable. In 2012, Guillaume Pousaz rebranded the company as Checkout.com with a revolutionary vision: create a payments platform using entirely its own technology rather than working with middlemen.
The company quickly obtained its license from the Financial Conduct Authority and secured principal memberships from MasterCard and Visa in 2013. But there was one major problem: nobody wanted to work with them as a payment processor.
“Nobody wanted to work with us,” Guillaume Pousaz explained, “I guess because we didn’t raise money or because we didn’t have enough money.” Instead of giving up, they made what seemed like an insane decision: build the entire payment processing platform themselves.
For seven years, Guillaume Pousaz bootstrapped Checkout.com without taking a single dollar of external funding. This wasn’t just about maintaining control; it was about proving the technology and business model could stand on their own. The strategy focused on serving major enterprise clients rather than chasing millions of small merchants.
The Record-Breaking Breakthrough
Checkout.com mostly flew under the radar until 2019, when Guillaume Pousaz decided it was time to accelerate growth. The company raised a jaw-dropping $230 million Series A round, the largest in European fintech history and third largest globally. The deal, reportedly agreed over “handshakes” rather than term sheets, valued the company at $2 billion.
The timing couldn’t have been better. When COVID-19 forced the world online, payment companies reaped enormous rewards. Guillaume Pousaz reported that their processing volume tripled during 2020 alone. By January 2021, the company raised another $450 million at a $15 billion valuation. Following a $1 billion fundraise in 2022, the company reached a staggering $40 billion valuation.
The Billionaire Behind the Scenes
Today, Guillaume Pousaz owns an estimated two-thirds of Checkout.com. His net worth peaked at $20 billion in 2022, landing him 5th on the Sunday Times Rich List as one of the wealthiest people in the UK, though current estimates put it at $7.8 billion according to Forbes. The company processes billions of transactions annually with over 1,900 employees across 19 countries, serving clients like Netflix, Adidas, Klarna, and Grab.
Unlike consumer-facing companies like PayPal, Checkout.com operates as a silent partner behind merchants. “We’re truly B2B,” Guillaume Pousaz explains. “Merchants have a love/hate relationship with PayPal because it owns the relationship with the customer rather than the merchant.”
The company boasts an incredible 99% client retention rate, focusing on fewer but larger enterprise customers rather than millions of small merchants. This strategy has paid off spectacularly.
Beyond Business
Despite his astronomical success, Guillaume Pousaz remains remarkably private and grounded. Now married with three children, he splits his time between Dubai and London. He’s known as a workaholic who puts in 80-hour weeks, earning warnings from his doctor about his pace.
In 2021, he established Zinial Growth, a family office focused on European technology investments. The name references the Sierre-Zinal mountain race, which the endurance athlete has often run. In 2022, he and his wife founded Pousaz Philanthropies, focusing on children’s safety and education worldwide.
The Future of Payments
Guillaume Pousaz believes his company is still in “Chapter Zero” of its story. “We plan to become the bank of the future,” he declares. “Today we’re trying to reinvent certain interactions in financial services.”
From college dropout to billionaire entrepreneur, Guillaume Pousaz proves that sometimes the most unexpected paths lead to extraordinary destinations. His story demonstrates that true entrepreneurship isn’t just about having a great idea; it’s about having the courage to pursue it when everyone thinks you’re crazy, the patience to build it properly, and the vision to see opportunities others miss.
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