Marc-Alexander Christ co-founded SumUp with Daniel Klein, Jan Deepen, Stefan Jeschonnek and Petter Made. The idea was conceived in 2011, the company was founded in 2012 and its first product launched in August of that year.
The founders funded SumUp themselves before a Series A. For its first four years it fought Payleven, a rival backed by Rocket Internet. Christ later said the merger with Payleven in 2016 ended a fight for survival.
After the merger SumUp expanded by acquisition: Shoplo in 2019, then Goodtill, Tiller, Paysolut and Fivestars in 2020 and 2021. Fivestars cost $317 million.
By 2022 it had about 3,000 staff and more than 3.5 million merchants in over 30 markets. A June 2022 round of 590 million euros valued it at about 8 billion euros, and Goldman Sachs led a 1.5 billion euro round in May 2024.