“Can Pinterest convert visual discovery at scale into a commerce and advertising revenue engine that rivals social-first competitors?”
Pinterest launched in 2010 as a visual bookmarking tool and grew into a discovery and inspiration platform with 570 million monthly active users. The company has consistently pushed toward social commerce, launching Buyable Pins with Stripe in 2015 as its first direct commerce foray. After its 2019 IPO, Pinterest has continued to deepen its commerce and advertising infrastructure, most recently upgrading its global payments stack by partnering with Checkout.com to handle advertiser billing at scale across international markets.
Pinterest processes payments through Checkout.com and Stripe.
Pinterest's lending and capital products are provided by Affirm.
Pinterest uses Checkout.com for FX and cross-border payouts.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 3 layers in Pinterest's stack: Payments / PSP (Checkout.com and Stripe); Lending (Affirm and Affirm BNPL (merchant checkout integration)); FX & payouts (Checkout.com).
Pinterest was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp and is founded in 2010, headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA.
Pinterest has raised ~$1.5B (pre-IPO) in total (latest round: IPO (NYSE: PINS), April 2019; valuation: ~$10.6B at IPO (mid-range)).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Pinterest 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.