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After a €90m raise, Dutch payments infrastructure start-up Mollie has hit unicorn status. The firm has seen significant growth over the last year, as the pandemic resulted in an e-commerce boom.
On Monday (7 September), Dutch payments start-up Mollie confirmed that it has reached unicorn status in an interview with TechCrunch. The company’s $1bn valuation is the result of a new funding round.
The Amsterdam-headquartered company, which was founded by Adriaan Mol, shared the news alongside Mollie’s latest funding announcement. The company has raised an additional €90m in funding, bringing the total raised by Mollie to €115m.
The Dutch start-up’s latest funding round was led by TCV, which has previously backed Airbnb, ByteDance, Facebook, Gofundme, Netflix and Revolut.
Speaking to TechCrunch, Mol said that the firm is on track to process more than €10bn in transactions this year, representing growth of 100pc on this time last year. Some markets, such as Germany, will see 1,000pc growth, according to the start-up.
Mollie’s technology
The start-up has developed a payments integration that can be hosted on e-commerce sites with a plugin or built to spec through the company’s payments packages. Mollie’s payments technology is used by companies such as Dyson, Acer, Unicef and Deliveroo.
The company’s payment platform supports all major payment methods, including Apple Pay, credit card, PayPal and Klarna. While Mollie offers a similar service to that of Stripe’s, it differs from its rival in that it provides telephone support and PayPal integration.
To Mol, the main difference between his business competitors such as Stripe is that provides localised payment offerings in a market where consumers’ and merchants’ preferences vary country by country, with some companies still not served by Stripe yet.
Mollie has been operating since 2004, but it was not until 2019 that the start-up raised its first funding round. Mol, who serves as CEO, told TechCrunch: “I built the back end and front end by myself when I still lived with my parents. It’s the Dutch way. Bootstrap your idea for a pretty long time.”
Years after the company was founded, Mollie underwent a major rebranding in 2017. The start-up ditched its old logo and colour scheme to better reflect its products. In July 2019, the start-up raised €25m to accelerate its international growth, attracting investors from unnamed global investment funds.
At the time, Mol commented: “With over 65,000 merchants, we’re only just getting started with our mission to empower merchants to sell and grow more efficiently with solid and easy-to-use financial services.”
In the year since, the start-up has increased the number of merchants using its technology to 100,000. The start-up’s payments platform is particularly popular in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
