Baristas, bookshops and bikestores — how Flatpay is spearheading the replacement cycle for millions of merchants entrenched in legacy payment solutions
By Josh Bell, Nils Howland & Zoe Qin
As fintech obsessives we never buy a coffee without checking the point-of-sale (PoS) solution.
No barista is safe from our questions.
That was certainly the case on a trip to Berlin a few months ago as we stepped out for some caffeine. The café was using Flatpay — and had proactively switched away from an incumbent. Speaking to both the barista and the owner, we were struck by how evangelical they were about the change.
After visiting a bookshop, a bike-store and a restaurant — with a further coffee in between — we had heard the similar tale. Business owners value Flatpay’s transparent and superior offer that allows for seamless operations around the clock — a flat rate on all cards, daily settlements, 24/7 customer service, intuitive UI/UX — a situation previously unimaginable for smaller merchants served by sleepy legacy providers.
Flatpay was not new to us — we keep a close eye on the space, and are proud to have been very early backers of Nordic fintech unicorns iZettle and Tink; businesses that actively drove forward global developments in payments and open banking. We also recently invested in Brite Payments, Lena Hackeloer’s next generation open banking platform. The Nordics have produced some of the best fintechs of our era, and we are confident that Flatpay is on a stellar trajectory.
CEO Sander Janca-Jensen and his fellow co-founders Rasmus Busk, Peter Lüth and Rasmus Hellmund Carlsen, bring together a wealth of complementary experience. As a team, they have together built a hyper-focused product and married it with Flatpay’s extremely effective go-to-market approach.
When we first met Sander over 12 months ago, it was clear that he is a force of nature and a fearless executor. He and Rasmus B also bring extensive field sales experience from security leader Verisure where they successfully scaled a sales team of 400. That field sales experience has led to Flatpay effectively reducing the barriers associated with selecting, switching to, and adopting a new payment service. With feet on the ground, managing the full value chain from selling, to installation, to cancelling historic contracts, Flatpay’s approach delivers personalised customer experience at scale.
Within 18 months of commercial launch, Flatpay managed to onboard over 5,000 merchants and expanded its footprint from Denmark to Finland and Germany. This makes it certainly one of the fastest growing companies we have come across; and it’s just the start.
Europe-wide expansion, development, and top talent acquisition: what’s next for Flatpay
Flatpay addresses a huge multi-billion dollar market opportunity in Europe alone, targeting the replacement cycle of seven million small and medium-sized merchants. These merchants are typically locked up with legacy players which dominate up to 80% of the SME market.
Tackling this replacement, Flatpay is focused on opening up new markets and hiring sales talent across Europe. In parallel, the team will invest further into their platform with a view to serving SMEs with more value-add services long-term, including e-commerce solutions and expense management tools.
Drawing from our experience backing global fintech leaders iZettle and Tink, we are proud to be leading Flatpay’s €45M Series B growth funding round. Merchants of all sizes deserve transparent and affordable payments, and an escape from hidden costs and fees leveraged by incumbents. Flatpay offers the ideal solution to this problem, and the company’s tireless team has an enormous market in its sights.
