“Can the UK's incumbent trade-directory become the transactional operating system — payments, lending, product commerce — for home improvement?”
Founded 1998 as a paper directory of vetted local tradespeople, Checkatrade evolved into the UK's largest home-improvement platform connecting homeowners with 44,000+ trades. After being acquired by HomeServe in 2017 and rolled up into Brookfield's portfolio in 2022, the company has aggressively expanded beyond lead generation into embedded finance and adjacent commerce: launching Checkatrade Pay in 2025 to facilitate customer-to-trade payments, Checkatrade Shop as a marketplace for products, and Checkatrade for Business to serve larger property/facility buyers. The strategic bet is to become the operating layer for UK home improvement, monetising transactions rather than just membership subscriptions.
Checkatrade processes payments through Checkatrade Pay (self-operated).
Checkatrade integrates with QuickBooks.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 2 layers in Checkatrade's stack: Payments / PSP (Checkatrade Pay (self-operated)); Accounting (QuickBooks).
Checkatrade was founded by Kevin Byrne and is founded in 1998, headquartered in Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Checkatrade and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.