The Dutch Mollie, for digital corporate payments, lands in Italy

In 2004, at the age of 18, instead of going to university, Adriaan Mol founded Mollie. The site had actually been active for four years to support shops and small businesses in their online activities. A couple of years after the start-up was created, when he had to integrate a payment system into the site, he realised how disappointing and backward the banks' offer was in terms of online payments. That is how that became Mollie's core business, which made it a pioneer of digital web transactions that has grown over the years to be one of the largest fintechs in Europe, with over 250,000 companies as customers, present in six continental markets, and with over EUR 30 billion in annual transactions.

Now the Dutch company lands in Italy with its unified platform that now integrates online and offline payments designed to simplify transactions, reconciliation and fraud prevention.

'Italy is the fourth largest market in Europe for ecommerce,' emphasises Mollie's CEO Koen Köppen, 'but the current solutions available are still inadequate and the market as a whole is underserved. We already have a few Italian customers, but this situation prompted us to open a dedicated branch in order to be able to offer a local, efficient experience, tailored to the needs of Italian companies and at lower costs'.

Mollie offers a range of tailor-made payment solutions, including popular payment methods such as Satispay and Bancomat Pay, a fast and localised onboarding experience with Italian support and plug-in integrations with popular ecommerce platforms. As part of its strategy to make money management easier for businesses, the Dutch fintech has expanded its financial services offering to include access to financing based on all sources of income and an invoicing service to simplify the fiscal management of invoices.

Thanks in part to the expansion to the Italian market, Mollie aims to maintain a growth rate of more than 30 per cent and profitability achieved in its early years. In 2021 it had reached a unicorn valuation of USD 6.5 billion. 'That was a very different time than now,' Köppen continues, 'back then the multiples for fintech valuation were high, now they are much lower, but on the other hand we have continued our growth at a profitable pace, so we maintain a fair valuation. In any case, we are not planning any new financing rounds for the time being; we have the resources to continue on our own.