Rentals United
“Can channel-management infrastructure become the payment and distribution backbone of the entire vacation-rental ecosystem?”
Founded2015
HQStockholm, Sweden (HQ Rentals United AB); Barcelona, Spain (operations)
FoundersJames Burrows
Total raised$4.2M+ (pre-acquisition)
Latest roundAcquired by Guesty
Valuationundisclosed
IndustryVertical SaaS / Vacation Rentals
The story
Founded 2015 in Stockholm as a vacation rental channel manager that syncs listings across 90+ OTAs (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo). Grew into distribution infrastructure for 400k+ properties globally. Acquired by Guesty (leading vacation rental PMS) and now operates as a Guesty subsidiary — combining Guesty's PMS with Rentals United's distribution layer. Embedded finance footprint is deliberately narrow: Stripe is offered as the payment rail to enable Merchant-of-Record status for property managers, but Rentals United does not hold funds, issue cards, or provide banking.
Product timeline
2015
Founded by three competing vacation rental agency owners to build a shared channel-management platform· founding
2019
Scaled to 100 employees, connected to 60+ listing sites and 100+ technology providers· growth
2021
Adopted Payhawk for internal spend management; processed 1M reservations for clients· operations
2024
Acquired by Guesty; became subsidiary within Guesty group· acquisition
2025
Launched Stripe for White Label — embedded Stripe Connect flow for PMS partners· payments
The stack
2 layers disclosed in Rentals United’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
1 more provider across 1 layer, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.