European unicorns come from the north

In the world of economics, unicorns are those companies, mostly start-ups, that reach at least $ 1 billion in value. As for the payments sector, driven by the online movement of a large part of purchases, the platforms have seen an exponential increase in their turnover with the pandemic, whether they were startups or, like Mollie, they had already existed for years. Mollie, founded by a Dutch entrepreneur in 2004, broke through $ 1 billion in September. It has now raised $ 800 million in the latest round of funding, and has reached a value of $ 6.5 billion (almost € 5.5 billion). The company announced that it expects to process around € 20 billion in payments by 2021, double compared to last year. In 2020, it had 100,000 monthly active sellers, which have increased this year to 120,000. Among its customers, the Deliveroo home delivery platform, the clothing and accessories brand Guess, donations for Unicef, the tech company Acer. Another push came from Brexit: in collaboration with Klarna, Magento and the EU Gateways initiative, it launched a project to support and encourage the continuation of online commerce also with the new regulatory framework, helping British companies to remain competitive on the European market.And if it is true that the pandemic has given a strong boost to online commerce, the signs of growth are showing no sign of abating. The payments industry has had a boom, but it continues to be huge and far more fragmented than it appears. “50% of the market is in the hands of the top ten platforms” explains the new CEO of Mollie Shane Happach, who has a decade of experience in WolrdPay “but the remaining 50% sees about 5 thousand competitors”. In the top ten there are PayPal, JP Morgan, WolrdPay, but others that seem giants, such as Stripe, are not among the largest. A large market, where there is room for many players as long as they know how to specialize. Mollie’s focus is on small businesses, under 50 thousand euros in monthly transactions: she pushes on the speed of use, with the possibility of starting receiving payments just 15 minutes after registering for the service, with transparent fees, already indicated on her website , which are charged only in the event of a successful transaction. It also provides free plugins to integrate with your site, to use immediately, or packages for customization. For companies with larger volumes, however, it provides customized formulas. It currently operates in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium, and the next announced step is to expand into the rest of Europe and beyond, expanding its portfolio of services beyond beyond simple payments. The new round of funding will target not only technological development, but also a major hiring plan, which will move it from around 480 employees to nearly 800 over the next six months.