Checkout Solution Startup Fast Closes Its Doors

Two years after its launch, online checkout startup Fast is out of business.

“After making great strides on our mission of making buying and selling frictionless for everyone, we have made the difficult decision to close our doors,” CEO Domm Holland wrote in an announcement posted on the company website Tuesday (April 5).

In a separate message to consumers, Holland wrote he and the company “regret to share that we will discontinue Fast Checkout as a payment method for you to use on your favorite sellers.” He also noted that the service would end completely April 15.

“Sometimes trailblazers don’t make it all the way to the mountain top,” he wrote in the second announcement. “But even in those situations, they pave a way that all others will follow. Fast has done that with bringing one-click and headless checkout into the mainstream.”

According to TechCrunch, Fast’s future had seemed grim since recent reports that the company’s revenue growth last year was weak — despite a $102 million Series B — while its spending was high, and its fundraising outlook bleak.

Fast was co-founded by Holland and Chief Operating Officer Allison Barr Allen. Holland has founded and led numerous companies in Australia while Allen had run global product operations for Uber’s Money Team. Fast offered two products — Fast Login and Fast Checkout — both of which employ one-click, sign-in and purchasing experience through any browser, device or platform.

Read more: Fast Races to Launch One-Click eCommerce for the Masses

Speaking to PYMNTS in 2020, Holland said the genesis of the company began with a family crisis. His son was briefly hospitalized, and his wife’s grandmother was in town to help the family. One of her chores was to order groceries online, a simple task complicated when she couldn’t remember or reset her password.

“Fast forward to today,” Holland said. “There’s over a billion people [sheltering] in place in their house, and primarily they’re ordering groceries online. I mean they’re ordering virtually everything online. It’s just ironic sort of timing that the problem we were trying to solve that day has been concentrated. So COVID is really sort of homing in on our absolute skillset, and so it’s a really fascinating event versus a horrible tragic time.”