November 6, 2025 • 24 mins
Europe isn’t one payments market; it’s dozens of overlapping preferences, currencies, and rails that can make cross‑border growth feel like threading a needle. We sit down with David Rintel, CEO of Finby, to explore how a one‑stop, proprietary stack can tame that complexity while giving merchants real control over speed, features, and cost. From rebranding TrustPay to Finby to securing a new European license, David shares why staking out a distinct identity matters when your strategy is to build infrastructure, not just resell it.
We dig into what merchants actually need to win in new countries: curated payment methods that fit both their target market and their business model. David breaks down where cards still win, where local methods like BLIK and iDEAL dominate, and how recurring billing, chargeback rules, and settlement flows shape conversion and risk. He explains why direct scheme memberships beyond cards unlock first‑mile access to features, lower latency, and better product roadmaps and how a unified API can turn new market launches into configuration rather than fresh builds.
Regulation gets real, too. EU‑level rules rarely land uniformly; national transpositions drive edge‑case complexity, while mandates like SCA and instant payments remake the pipes. David’s advice is blunt and useful: stop trying to predict the winning rail and instead design for adaptability - teams, partners, and tech that bend without breaking. If you’re leading payments for a cross‑border brand, you’ll leave with a clearer playbook for method selection, integration depth, compliance guardrails, and the mindset to stay ahead of constant change.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast,
where we talk to sea levelleaders from across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing the productsand services that impact the
payment space today, as well astrends and predictions for the
future of payments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
SPEAKER_02 (00:18):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments Podcast.
I'm your host, Greg Myers, andtoday's special guest is David
Rintel, the CEO of FinBee,formerly known as TrustPay.
And we'll get into thatrebranding in a minute.
So, David, thank you so much forbeing here and welcome to the
show.
Thank you for having me, Greg.
So if you don't mind, can youwalk us through your
professional journey and how yougot there?
SPEAKER_01 (00:38):
Sure.
Even though it's not really muchof a story or much of a journey,
the idea of TrustPay, which wasoriginally my father's, came
around in sort of 2008-2009 whenI was still finishing uni back
in the UK.
So I literally started workingon the paperwork for a license
application while I was stillfinishing my master's degree.
(01:01):
And this is by and large theonly thing I've ever done since.
So my CV is you know ratherlacking in that regard.
SPEAKER_02 (01:11):
Great, great.
So let's talk about FinBee.
So can you tell us what thecompany actually does?
SPEAKER_01 (01:17):
In a nutshell, we are today at least, uh, we're a
pure play e-commerce paymentprovider.
We focus on sort of mid-to-largemerchants with a cross-border
focus or a cross-borderambition, if you will.
And it is we see ourselves sortof as a payment service
(01:40):
provider, even though underneathwe are an acquirer, so we're
principal members of Visa andMasterCard.
We're also members of a numberof other different local and
regional payment schemes,especially in Europe.
And our ambition really is toprovide a seamless sort of
one-stop shop for cross-bordermerchants with a European base
(02:03):
or a European focus.
SPEAKER_02 (02:05):
Okay.
Are there specific verticalsthat you focus on?
SPEAKER_01 (02:08):
So already once you define yourself as a pure play
e-commerce, cross-border focusedplayer, you've sort of narrowed
down your categories prettysignificantly as a big chunk of
e-commerce ultimately is sort ofrather rather domestic.
By definition, sort of digitalgoods, like games are oftentimes
(02:31):
easier to scale cross-border.
So we do have uh we do likedigital goods, even the more
domestic types like like media,for example.
But it's really our focus isanything that has a cross-border
ambition, which sort of adds thethe cross-border complications.
That's where our sweet spotreally happens to happens to be.
SPEAKER_02 (02:54):
Well, you recently went through a rebranding.
Can you tell us what that meansfor the company?
What's changed and why now?
SPEAKER_01 (03:01):
So the the the story there is trust pay as a name
makes an awful lot of sense ormade an awful lot of sense.
It has two very you know sort ofimportant English words in it,
and it tells the message prettyaccurately.
The only problem there is thatwe were not the only ones with
(03:21):
the same or similar idea.
So the sort of trust somethingpay something space has become
rather crowded in terms ofnames, and it became rather
difficult to sort ofdifferentiate yourself.
So for a while we have beenthinking that we should claim a
space for our own, some a moredistinct identity as the company
(03:45):
grew and matured.
And um sometime last year wehave decided to obtain an
additional license in Europe, inMalta for that matter.
And already then we knew we sortof wanted to rebrand.
And we have decided to time therebranding alongside us having
(04:08):
obtained the regulatory license,and that sort of all came
together late August, earlySeptember.
So we decided to rebrand thisthis past September.
It's you know pretty exciting,even though for for me
bittersweet to an extent,because I sort of thought of
myself as the CEO of TrustPayfor 15 years, or you know, being
(04:30):
associated with TrustPay for 15years.
Uh, but it's a it's a newchapter that we found very sort
of exciting and uh you know justmarks a new stage of our
revolution, if you will.
SPEAKER_02 (04:43):
Well, what's the biggest challenge that your
company is solving for yourcustomers right now?
SPEAKER_01 (04:48):
So if you are in payments in Europe, what you
have seen over the past, whatyou would have seen about over
the past decade or so, is amassive fragmentation in
payments or payment methods orpayment choices.
And if you do what we do is wesupport, you know, we have to
(05:10):
support a number of differentmarkets.
They come with their owndifferent currencies, both of
course on the processing and thesettlement side.
There is a flurry of paymentmethods that sort of new ones
pop up, some become lesspopular, but they never really
leave all together, so theystill have some uh users who are
very attached to them.
(05:30):
So it's it's become rathercomplex.
And our job in a nutshell is toreduce the complexity into uh
into something that's seamlessand simple for our customers,
for for the e-commercemerchants.
So we take all the all the messthat we as a payment industry
create and try to squeeze itinto a one contract, one
(05:54):
integration, one reconciliation,one system environment.
So it's it's taking, which ofcourse has to evolve with the
time.
And there's something constantlygoing on.
So it's taking the complexelements and simplifying them
enough to make them useful forour customers.
SPEAKER_02 (06:16):
Well, what would you say differentiates Venbi from
your competitors?
SPEAKER_01 (06:19):
So there are a number of different things, some
things that we sort of do takepride in.
It's the aforementioned one-stopshop.
You come to us and you know, wewant to make sure we can take
care of all of your paymentacceptance needs.
Underneath, we have a coupleother differentiating factors.
(06:41):
We run on proprietary tech,which sort of makes a difference
in terms of your ability to beflexible and to react to new
developments.
Anything from um sort oftokenization and click to pay on
the card site through newpayment initiatives popping up
in Europe, buy now, pay later,and everything rather than in
(07:04):
between.
And the the last piece is thatwe are infrastructure builders.
So as opposed to some of ourcompetitors who are primarily
acquirers and they seethemselves as sort of acquirers
first, we do have direct schemememberships in non-card scheme
(07:24):
schemes, be it Blick in Polandor Ideal in the Netherlands and
a number of others, which allowsus to have full control over the
tech stack and be first in linefor any new technical
initiatives and productdevelopments that the schemes
choose to offer from time totime.
SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
How do you see the future of online payments in
Europe and beyond and what keytrends or opportunities will
shape that journey?
SPEAKER_01 (07:52):
That's a very expansive question.
You know, Europe as such, as aunified payments market, doesn't
exist.
So if you just take the EuropeanUnion out of Europe, that's 27
countries, and you have amultitude of languages, a
multitude of currencies, andevery single country has some
(08:14):
local quirk.
And so the the level ofdivergence between Portugal and
Germany is far greater thanlet's say California and Ohio in
the US, where the paymentpreferences are by and large
rather similar.
So what we have seen over thepast decade or so was a flurry
(08:36):
of new payment methods andpayment options.
And they came to the market withvarying levels and degrees of
success.
There are certain successstories, like in Poland, which
launched in 2015, and in someeight years, eight, nine years,
they achieved 70% market shareon e-commerce from zero.
(08:59):
You have ID in the Netherlands,which has been around for a
while, and they've been recentlyacquired by EPI, about to be
rebranded to Vero.
Again, you're talking about somea local payment method with a
65% market share in the localmarket.
Portugal, a country of 10.5,10.8 million people, they have
(09:20):
two proprietary local paymentmethods that only work in
Portugal.
And the list sort of goes on andon and on.
Then you have theaccount-to-account transfers
with sort of open banking and sowhich sort of join forces with
some of the olderaccount-to-account transfer
solutions that have been inEurope for 15-20 years, and you
(09:43):
sort of mix this all together,put some bin out pay later into
the mix, and it becomes anextremely fragmented market
where you sort of should look atit as more of a collection of
regions or even collection ofcountries as opposed to a single
European payments market.
Now there are some attempts toconsolidate, however, these
(10:11):
attempts have not shown anyresults to date.
And that's in a that's on acontinent where if you just look
at the ballpark numbers, over50% of the population of the
European Union lives incountries where the two major
card schemes are not thedominant payment option in
(10:33):
e-commerce.
Now this sort of ranges fromIreland, which is completely,
which is very similar to theUnited States in terms of
payment preferences, to Poland,where cards are a minority
payment method completelysqueezed out by the local
(10:53):
payment method called BLIC.
So that's the no we can we candwell on this for as long as you
as long as you like.
I think we could go on for hoursand hours on the on the topic of
European payments.
Ultimately, it's been quite theride, which doesn't seem to be
coming to an end any anytimesoon.
SPEAKER_02 (11:14):
So your merchants, if they're selling across
countries, how many paymentmethods do they have to offer?
It seems like there's this mightbe this huge dashboard of
potential options.
It seems like that just you knowbecomes very complicated.
So how does how does that work?
How do merchants decide what tooffer?
SPEAKER_01 (11:34):
So I I think this is where the job of a payment
service provider comes in.
I like to think of ourselvessometimes, much to the dismay of
our marketing and sales team, asa butler of sorts.
So if you as our prospectivecustomer, even our existing
customer, say, I like to, I ambased out of Poland, so I know
(11:56):
the Polish payment methods, butI like to sell in acceptance
from the Netherlands or fromPortugal, then it is our job to
come in and say, okay, if youwant to be in the Netherlands,
you should be using ideal.
You don't want to list all ofthe available European payment
methods for every singlecountry, especially since some
(12:17):
of them are strictly local.
If you want to go into Portugal,you may want to consider
multibanco and MBWA.
Things get even more complicatedthough.
It also depends on your specificacceptance criteria, specific
product.
So many of these local paymentmethods do not support recurring
(12:40):
billing.
So if you want to accept IPL,that's great.
There are no chargebacks, it'sit's very convenient, it's
extremely cheap.
If your business model requiresrecurring billing, it's not
going to work.
You can go for separate directdebits.
They work on recurring billing,but they're an absolute
nightmare in terms ofchargebacks because you have a
(13:02):
essentially what amounts to aneight-week no questions asked
money back guarantee, which canbe extended up to 13 months.
So you have to, is it suitablefor newspapers and streaming
services?
Sure.
Can you sell high-value physicalgoods with a payment method that
is a no questions asked moneyback guarantee?
(13:25):
We wouldn't risk it.
So it is sort of our job to comein and say, okay, these are the
payment methods which we believeare relevant to you, both in
terms of your underlyingbusiness model and in terms of
the geographies that you target.
And then comes the contract andthe integration.
But you have to sort of handholdsome of the customers in terms
(13:49):
of what they should choosewhere, and also update your
platform and update theirproduct teams in terms of the
product developments that thesepayment methods and payment
schemes come up with.
So the earlier example of norecurring billing on payment
methods like ideal or Blick nolonger applies to Blick.
(14:13):
The payment scheme on its ownlaunched recurring billing as an
option earlier this year.
But to make things a bit morecomplicated, they have
introduced, I believe, threedifferent subtypes of recurring
billing, each with a slightlydifferent integration stack,
different chargeback rights, andslightly different regulations.
(14:36):
And this is just a paymentmethod, which is very important,
but it only covers Poland.
SPEAKER_02 (14:42):
So a couple follow-on questions.
I think this is a great area tokind of go deep in.
And you mentioned you owned yourown tech stack.
So how automated is it for amerchant to move into another
country?
Is it is it more work on theirend and it's more like click the
button on your side, or is thatkind of not the case?
SPEAKER_01 (15:01):
So once the initial integration and certification
and everything else is done,that's our job.
That's the heavy lifting thathas to be done by us as a
provider.
In terms of the contractuals,it's a you just tick the box in
a menu, pretty much.
So there isn't an awfullycomplicated process there.
And all of the integrations orall of the payment methods sit
(15:25):
on the same stack and they'reavailable within the same API.
Now, naturally, differentpayment methods might have
slightly differentcharacteristics or slightly
different fields you need tosubmit.
But if you've managed to pulloff cards, even with a rather
deep integration, you will beokay with these local payment
(15:45):
methods too.
And we offer everything fromhosted payment pages where the
merchant only ever needs toliterally add a button to, you
know, add a button to itscheckout down to sort of
embedded fields and or dynamicfields as they're called, all
(16:06):
the way to sort of very sort ofdeep server-to-server
integrations on card acquiring.
So we we offer a suite oftechnical solutions based on the
level of investment that themerchant wants to put in, and
also of course based on thebased on the payment method
itself.
SPEAKER_02 (16:25):
And one more question always comes up in my
mind (16:29):
the regulatory environment, compliance, I mean,
all of those things.
I would think, given all thesedifferent payment methods and
countries, it's got to be achallenge.
So how do you address that?
SPEAKER_01 (16:41):
So that there is the the regulatory landscape for
Europe itself, which is dynamic.
And then uh I've seen the youknow, I've seen Americans having
a very sort of strong view ofhow overly regulated Europe, the
regulations relating tofinancial services are pretty uh
(17:02):
they're pretty stringent.
The issue is that even if youhave European level regulations,
in most cases, they go throughnational implementations or as
they're known, transpositions,into the 27 local or member
state legal systems, and thereis always a level of divergence
(17:26):
in terms of how these areimplemented.
So it it can create a bit of abit of a challenge, to say the
least.
Also, you have sort of many newregulatory initiatives, the
instant payments mandate thatcame that really kicked in, I
think, October 5th, so 10, 11days ago, through new evolutions
(17:49):
of PSD and many others.
But this is not something thatnecessarily should affect the
merchants.
This is the job of the paymentproviders to handle.
Sometimes there is no gettingaround it, like when the strong
customer authentication mandatewas rolled out throughout
Europe, that required effortacross the entire ecosystem, and
(18:14):
it affected it affected themerchants, the consumers, and
everyone else, because it wasjust a system-wide security
upgrade, which works now, butthe there are certain dathing
problems, uh, shall we shall wesay?
SPEAKER_02 (18:28):
Okay.
So what does success look likefor your company over the next
three to five years?
SPEAKER_01 (18:33):
So for us, we are uh we we are still an independent
companies.
We were bootstrapped to beginwith, we've never taken any
outside investors.
So in three to five years, we'dstill like to be growing
organically, and we still havevery strong organic growth.
Ideally, we still like to remainindependent because it gives you
(18:57):
the ability to react morequickly, be a bit more
contrarian sometimes than someof your other peers, because
ultimately it is you have nooutside investors to to answer
to, so you only have sort ofyourself to to play.
We'd like to be a sort of astill nimble provider being able
(19:19):
to adapt to new trends andstaying at the at the top of our
game, so to say, uh for lack ofa lack of a better term.
So it's it's in in naturalist tobe bigger, stronger, yet still
independent.
SPEAKER_02 (19:34):
So if you could go back to the start of your
career, what advice would yougive yourself?
SPEAKER_01 (19:39):
I would list all the different mistakes I have made,
be quite the list, and thenknowing myself, I would try to
heed my advice and just makedifferent mistakes anyway.
The benefit of hindsight is is agreat thing, and we could go on
for hours how back in uh 2012 Ithought that cards were on this
(20:06):
sort of end of history march,and there would be nothing else
in a decade.
Boy, I was wrong.
And and many, many sort of otherother predictions that I sort of
made internally, where I thoughtto myself, and I can just tell
myself, you know, boy was I boywas I wrong, and it just comes
in again and again and again.
(20:28):
But but I suppose the f the thephilosophy that sort of we have
adopted over time, and it's ait's a lesson that I have
learned personally, is not totry and predict the future too
much.
I I I don't think I'm a I'm agreat fortune teller.
It is it comes down to can weremain and can I personally
(20:54):
remain nimble in variousdifferent versions that the
future may take and not put allof my eggs in one basket and
just remain nimble and rathersort of quick on your feet?
And if you lose, you don't loseeverything and you don't lose
that that big.
And this is a lesson that tookme a while to learn, but it it
(21:17):
is something that uh I believeis a very valuable lesson in
life.
SPEAKER_02 (21:23):
So, what's one thing that payment leaders that might
be listening today should bethinking about right now?
SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
If you look at everything that's that's that's
going on, especially if you'reexposed to the world of
cross-border payments, and thisgoes back to my original
fortune-telling analogy.
I think it is important to askyourself a question whether you
believe that your team, yourmindset, your your tech stack,
and importantly your suppliersare have the mindset, the
(21:56):
ability, the capability,whatever you may want to call
this, to react to the changingenvironment.
Because we we are going througha period of major changes or
rather significant instability,and this goes, of course, well
beyond payments, and things thatwe thought were out of the
(22:19):
realms of the possible 24 monthsago, are now just here, and they
might be here to stay.
And you may not know what thefuture holds, and you likely
don't, well, at least certainlyI know I don't.
But how ready are you, and howready is your organization to
adapt to change?
(22:39):
And it may come from agenticcommerce and AI, fraud,
regulation, fragmentation as aresult of geopolitics, or
everything and nothing that I'vementioned above, but they can
all spell major change.
And you should be flexible inyour thinking and you should be
(23:00):
ready to adapt, which is amindset thing, it's a it's a
technological question, um, andit's a question of which
partners have you selected toaccompany you on the journey.
SPEAKER_02 (23:13):
Well, David, this has been a great conversation.
Is there anything else you'dlike to add before we wrap up
the show?
SPEAKER_01 (23:19):
No, I think if I start again, I will speak for
another 35 minutes, and thatwould bore your listeners to
tears.
SPEAKER_02 (23:27):
No, it's been a great conversation.
Well, I really appreciate yourtime today and and being on the
show.
I know your time is veryvaluable.
So again, thank you so much forbeing here.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
And to all your listeners outthere, I thank you for your time
as well.
And until the next story.
SPEAKER_00 (23:42):
Thank you for joining us this week on the
Leaders in Payments Podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpayments.com, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening, pleaseshare on your social channels as
well.
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast,
where we talk to sea levelleaders from across the payments
landscape.
We'll be discussing the productsand services that impact the
payment space today, as well astrends and predictions for the
future of payments.
We will also hear stories fromour guests about their journeys
to the top.
SPEAKER_02 (00:18):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in
Payments Podcast.
I'm your host, Greg Myers, andtoday's special guest is David
Rintel, the CEO of FinBee,formerly known as TrustPay.
And we'll get into thatrebranding in a minute.
So, David, thank you so much forbeing here and welcome to the
show.
Thank you for having me, Greg.
So if you don't mind, can youwalk us through your
professional journey and how yougot there?
SPEAKER_01 (00:38):
Sure.
Even though it's not really muchof a story or much of a journey,
the idea of TrustPay, which wasoriginally my father's, came
around in sort of 2008-2009 whenI was still finishing uni back
in the UK.
So I literally started workingon the paperwork for a license
application while I was stillfinishing my master's degree.
(01:01):
And this is by and large theonly thing I've ever done since.
So my CV is you know ratherlacking in that regard.
SPEAKER_02 (01:11):
Great, great.
So let's talk about FinBee.
So can you tell us what thecompany actually does?
SPEAKER_01 (01:17):
In a nutshell, we are today at least, uh, we're a
pure play e-commerce paymentprovider.
We focus on sort of mid-to-largemerchants with a cross-border
focus or a cross-borderambition, if you will.
And it is we see ourselves sortof as a payment service
(01:40):
provider, even though underneathwe are an acquirer, so we're
principal members of Visa andMasterCard.
We're also members of a numberof other different local and
regional payment schemes,especially in Europe.
And our ambition really is toprovide a seamless sort of
one-stop shop for cross-bordermerchants with a European base
(02:03):
or a European focus.
SPEAKER_02 (02:05):
Okay.
Are there specific verticalsthat you focus on?
SPEAKER_01 (02:08):
So already once you define yourself as a pure play
e-commerce, cross-border focusedplayer, you've sort of narrowed
down your categories prettysignificantly as a big chunk of
e-commerce ultimately is sort ofrather rather domestic.
By definition, sort of digitalgoods, like games are oftentimes
(02:31):
easier to scale cross-border.
So we do have uh we do likedigital goods, even the more
domestic types like like media,for example.
But it's really our focus isanything that has a cross-border
ambition, which sort of adds thethe cross-border complications.
That's where our sweet spotreally happens to happens to be.
SPEAKER_02 (02:54):
Well, you recently went through a rebranding.
Can you tell us what that meansfor the company?
What's changed and why now?
SPEAKER_01 (03:01):
So the the the story there is trust pay as a name
makes an awful lot of sense ormade an awful lot of sense.
It has two very you know sort ofimportant English words in it,
and it tells the message prettyaccurately.
The only problem there is thatwe were not the only ones with
(03:21):
the same or similar idea.
So the sort of trust somethingpay something space has become
rather crowded in terms ofnames, and it became rather
difficult to sort ofdifferentiate yourself.
So for a while we have beenthinking that we should claim a
space for our own, some a moredistinct identity as the company
(03:45):
grew and matured.
And um sometime last year wehave decided to obtain an
additional license in Europe, inMalta for that matter.
And already then we knew we sortof wanted to rebrand.
And we have decided to time therebranding alongside us having
(04:08):
obtained the regulatory license,and that sort of all came
together late August, earlySeptember.
So we decided to rebrand thisthis past September.
It's you know pretty exciting,even though for for me
bittersweet to an extent,because I sort of thought of
myself as the CEO of TrustPayfor 15 years, or you know, being
(04:30):
associated with TrustPay for 15years.
Uh, but it's a it's a newchapter that we found very sort
of exciting and uh you know justmarks a new stage of our
revolution, if you will.
SPEAKER_02 (04:43):
Well, what's the biggest challenge that your
company is solving for yourcustomers right now?
SPEAKER_01 (04:48):
So if you are in payments in Europe, what you
have seen over the past, whatyou would have seen about over
the past decade or so, is amassive fragmentation in
payments or payment methods orpayment choices.
And if you do what we do is wesupport, you know, we have to
(05:10):
support a number of differentmarkets.
They come with their owndifferent currencies, both of
course on the processing and thesettlement side.
There is a flurry of paymentmethods that sort of new ones
pop up, some become lesspopular, but they never really
leave all together, so theystill have some uh users who are
very attached to them.
(05:30):
So it's it's become rathercomplex.
And our job in a nutshell is toreduce the complexity into uh
into something that's seamlessand simple for our customers,
for for the e-commercemerchants.
So we take all the all the messthat we as a payment industry
create and try to squeeze itinto a one contract, one
(05:54):
integration, one reconciliation,one system environment.
So it's it's taking, which ofcourse has to evolve with the
time.
And there's something constantlygoing on.
So it's taking the complexelements and simplifying them
enough to make them useful forour customers.
SPEAKER_02 (06:16):
Well, what would you say differentiates Venbi from
your competitors?
SPEAKER_01 (06:19):
So there are a number of different things, some
things that we sort of do takepride in.
It's the aforementioned one-stopshop.
You come to us and you know, wewant to make sure we can take
care of all of your paymentacceptance needs.
Underneath, we have a coupleother differentiating factors.
(06:41):
We run on proprietary tech,which sort of makes a difference
in terms of your ability to beflexible and to react to new
developments.
Anything from um sort oftokenization and click to pay on
the card site through newpayment initiatives popping up
in Europe, buy now, pay later,and everything rather than in
(07:04):
between.
And the the last piece is thatwe are infrastructure builders.
So as opposed to some of ourcompetitors who are primarily
acquirers and they seethemselves as sort of acquirers
first, we do have direct schemememberships in non-card scheme
(07:24):
schemes, be it Blick in Polandor Ideal in the Netherlands and
a number of others, which allowsus to have full control over the
tech stack and be first in linefor any new technical
initiatives and productdevelopments that the schemes
choose to offer from time totime.
SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
How do you see the future of online payments in
Europe and beyond and what keytrends or opportunities will
shape that journey?
SPEAKER_01 (07:52):
That's a very expansive question.
You know, Europe as such, as aunified payments market, doesn't
exist.
So if you just take the EuropeanUnion out of Europe, that's 27
countries, and you have amultitude of languages, a
multitude of currencies, andevery single country has some
(08:14):
local quirk.
And so the the level ofdivergence between Portugal and
Germany is far greater thanlet's say California and Ohio in
the US, where the paymentpreferences are by and large
rather similar.
So what we have seen over thepast decade or so was a flurry
(08:36):
of new payment methods andpayment options.
And they came to the market withvarying levels and degrees of
success.
There are certain successstories, like in Poland, which
launched in 2015, and in someeight years, eight, nine years,
they achieved 70% market shareon e-commerce from zero.
(08:59):
You have ID in the Netherlands,which has been around for a
while, and they've been recentlyacquired by EPI, about to be
rebranded to Vero.
Again, you're talking about somea local payment method with a
65% market share in the localmarket.
Portugal, a country of 10.5,10.8 million people, they have
(09:20):
two proprietary local paymentmethods that only work in
Portugal.
And the list sort of goes on andon and on.
Then you have theaccount-to-account transfers
with sort of open banking and sowhich sort of join forces with
some of the olderaccount-to-account transfer
solutions that have been inEurope for 15-20 years, and you
(09:43):
sort of mix this all together,put some bin out pay later into
the mix, and it becomes anextremely fragmented market
where you sort of should look atit as more of a collection of
regions or even collection ofcountries as opposed to a single
European payments market.
Now there are some attempts toconsolidate, however, these
(10:11):
attempts have not shown anyresults to date.
And that's in a that's on acontinent where if you just look
at the ballpark numbers, over50% of the population of the
European Union lives incountries where the two major
card schemes are not thedominant payment option in
(10:33):
e-commerce.
Now this sort of ranges fromIreland, which is completely,
which is very similar to theUnited States in terms of
payment preferences, to Poland,where cards are a minority
payment method completelysqueezed out by the local
(10:53):
payment method called BLIC.
So that's the no we can we candwell on this for as long as you
as long as you like.
I think we could go on for hoursand hours on the on the topic of
European payments.
Ultimately, it's been quite theride, which doesn't seem to be
coming to an end any anytimesoon.
SPEAKER_02 (11:14):
So your merchants, if they're selling across
countries, how many paymentmethods do they have to offer?
It seems like there's this mightbe this huge dashboard of
potential options.
It seems like that just you knowbecomes very complicated.
So how does how does that work?
How do merchants decide what tooffer?
SPEAKER_01 (11:34):
So I I think this is where the job of a payment
service provider comes in.
I like to think of ourselvessometimes, much to the dismay of
our marketing and sales team, asa butler of sorts.
So if you as our prospectivecustomer, even our existing
customer, say, I like to, I ambased out of Poland, so I know
(11:56):
the Polish payment methods, butI like to sell in acceptance
from the Netherlands or fromPortugal, then it is our job to
come in and say, okay, if youwant to be in the Netherlands,
you should be using ideal.
You don't want to list all ofthe available European payment
methods for every singlecountry, especially since some
(12:17):
of them are strictly local.
If you want to go into Portugal,you may want to consider
multibanco and MBWA.
Things get even more complicatedthough.
It also depends on your specificacceptance criteria, specific
product.
So many of these local paymentmethods do not support recurring
(12:40):
billing.
So if you want to accept IPL,that's great.
There are no chargebacks, it'sit's very convenient, it's
extremely cheap.
If your business model requiresrecurring billing, it's not
going to work.
You can go for separate directdebits.
They work on recurring billing,but they're an absolute
nightmare in terms ofchargebacks because you have a
(13:02):
essentially what amounts to aneight-week no questions asked
money back guarantee, which canbe extended up to 13 months.
So you have to, is it suitablefor newspapers and streaming
services?
Sure.
Can you sell high-value physicalgoods with a payment method that
is a no questions asked moneyback guarantee?
(13:25):
We wouldn't risk it.
So it is sort of our job to comein and say, okay, these are the
payment methods which we believeare relevant to you, both in
terms of your underlyingbusiness model and in terms of
the geographies that you target.
And then comes the contract andthe integration.
But you have to sort of handholdsome of the customers in terms
(13:49):
of what they should choosewhere, and also update your
platform and update theirproduct teams in terms of the
product developments that thesepayment methods and payment
schemes come up with.
So the earlier example of norecurring billing on payment
methods like ideal or Blick nolonger applies to Blick.
(14:13):
The payment scheme on its ownlaunched recurring billing as an
option earlier this year.
But to make things a bit morecomplicated, they have
introduced, I believe, threedifferent subtypes of recurring
billing, each with a slightlydifferent integration stack,
different chargeback rights, andslightly different regulations.
(14:36):
And this is just a paymentmethod, which is very important,
but it only covers Poland.
SPEAKER_02 (14:42):
So a couple follow-on questions.
I think this is a great area tokind of go deep in.
And you mentioned you owned yourown tech stack.
So how automated is it for amerchant to move into another
country?
Is it is it more work on theirend and it's more like click the
button on your side, or is thatkind of not the case?
SPEAKER_01 (15:01):
So once the initial integration and certification
and everything else is done,that's our job.
That's the heavy lifting thathas to be done by us as a
provider.
In terms of the contractuals,it's a you just tick the box in
a menu, pretty much.
So there isn't an awfullycomplicated process there.
And all of the integrations orall of the payment methods sit
(15:25):
on the same stack and they'reavailable within the same API.
Now, naturally, differentpayment methods might have
slightly differentcharacteristics or slightly
different fields you need tosubmit.
But if you've managed to pulloff cards, even with a rather
deep integration, you will beokay with these local payment
(15:45):
methods too.
And we offer everything fromhosted payment pages where the
merchant only ever needs toliterally add a button to, you
know, add a button to itscheckout down to sort of
embedded fields and or dynamicfields as they're called, all
(16:06):
the way to sort of very sort ofdeep server-to-server
integrations on card acquiring.
So we we offer a suite oftechnical solutions based on the
level of investment that themerchant wants to put in, and
also of course based on thebased on the payment method
itself.
SPEAKER_02 (16:25):
And one more question always comes up in my
mind (16:29):
the regulatory environment, compliance, I mean,
all of those things.
I would think, given all thesedifferent payment methods and
countries, it's got to be achallenge.
So how do you address that?
SPEAKER_01 (16:41):
So that there is the the regulatory landscape for
Europe itself, which is dynamic.
And then uh I've seen the youknow, I've seen Americans having
a very sort of strong view ofhow overly regulated Europe, the
regulations relating tofinancial services are pretty uh
(17:02):
they're pretty stringent.
The issue is that even if youhave European level regulations,
in most cases, they go throughnational implementations or as
they're known, transpositions,into the 27 local or member
state legal systems, and thereis always a level of divergence
(17:26):
in terms of how these areimplemented.
So it it can create a bit of abit of a challenge, to say the
least.
Also, you have sort of many newregulatory initiatives, the
instant payments mandate thatcame that really kicked in, I
think, October 5th, so 10, 11days ago, through new evolutions
(17:49):
of PSD and many others.
But this is not something thatnecessarily should affect the
merchants.
This is the job of the paymentproviders to handle.
Sometimes there is no gettingaround it, like when the strong
customer authentication mandatewas rolled out throughout
Europe, that required effortacross the entire ecosystem, and
(18:14):
it affected it affected themerchants, the consumers, and
everyone else, because it wasjust a system-wide security
upgrade, which works now, butthe there are certain dathing
problems, uh, shall we shall wesay?
SPEAKER_02 (18:28):
Okay.
So what does success look likefor your company over the next
three to five years?
SPEAKER_01 (18:33):
So for us, we are uh we we are still an independent
companies.
We were bootstrapped to beginwith, we've never taken any
outside investors.
So in three to five years, we'dstill like to be growing
organically, and we still havevery strong organic growth.
Ideally, we still like to remainindependent because it gives you
(18:57):
the ability to react morequickly, be a bit more
contrarian sometimes than someof your other peers, because
ultimately it is you have nooutside investors to to answer
to, so you only have sort ofyourself to to play.
We'd like to be a sort of astill nimble provider being able
(19:19):
to adapt to new trends andstaying at the at the top of our
game, so to say, uh for lack ofa lack of a better term.
So it's it's in in naturalist tobe bigger, stronger, yet still
independent.
SPEAKER_02 (19:34):
So if you could go back to the start of your
career, what advice would yougive yourself?
SPEAKER_01 (19:39):
I would list all the different mistakes I have made,
be quite the list, and thenknowing myself, I would try to
heed my advice and just makedifferent mistakes anyway.
The benefit of hindsight is is agreat thing, and we could go on
for hours how back in uh 2012 Ithought that cards were on this
(20:06):
sort of end of history march,and there would be nothing else
in a decade.
Boy, I was wrong.
And and many, many sort of otherother predictions that I sort of
made internally, where I thoughtto myself, and I can just tell
myself, you know, boy was I boywas I wrong, and it just comes
in again and again and again.
(20:28):
But but I suppose the f the thephilosophy that sort of we have
adopted over time, and it's ait's a lesson that I have
learned personally, is not totry and predict the future too
much.
I I I don't think I'm a I'm agreat fortune teller.
It is it comes down to can weremain and can I personally
(20:54):
remain nimble in variousdifferent versions that the
future may take and not put allof my eggs in one basket and
just remain nimble and rathersort of quick on your feet?
And if you lose, you don't loseeverything and you don't lose
that that big.
And this is a lesson that tookme a while to learn, but it it
(21:17):
is something that uh I believeis a very valuable lesson in
life.
SPEAKER_02 (21:23):
So, what's one thing that payment leaders that might
be listening today should bethinking about right now?
SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
If you look at everything that's that's that's
going on, especially if you'reexposed to the world of
cross-border payments, and thisgoes back to my original
fortune-telling analogy.
I think it is important to askyourself a question whether you
believe that your team, yourmindset, your your tech stack,
and importantly your suppliersare have the mindset, the
(21:56):
ability, the capability,whatever you may want to call
this, to react to the changingenvironment.
Because we we are going througha period of major changes or
rather significant instability,and this goes, of course, well
beyond payments, and things thatwe thought were out of the
(22:19):
realms of the possible 24 monthsago, are now just here, and they
might be here to stay.
And you may not know what thefuture holds, and you likely
don't, well, at least certainlyI know I don't.
But how ready are you, and howready is your organization to
adapt to change?
(22:39):
And it may come from agenticcommerce and AI, fraud,
regulation, fragmentation as aresult of geopolitics, or
everything and nothing that I'vementioned above, but they can
all spell major change.
And you should be flexible inyour thinking and you should be
(23:00):
ready to adapt, which is amindset thing, it's a it's a
technological question, um, andit's a question of which
partners have you selected toaccompany you on the journey.
SPEAKER_02 (23:13):
Well, David, this has been a great conversation.
Is there anything else you'dlike to add before we wrap up
the show?
SPEAKER_01 (23:19):
No, I think if I start again, I will speak for
another 35 minutes, and thatwould bore your listeners to
tears.
SPEAKER_02 (23:27):
No, it's been a great conversation.
Well, I really appreciate yourtime today and and being on the
show.
I know your time is veryvaluable.
So again, thank you so much forbeing here.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
And to all your listeners outthere, I thank you for your time
as well.
And until the next story.
SPEAKER_00 (23:42):
Thank you for joining us this week on the
Leaders in Payments Podcast.
Make sure you visit our websiteat leadersinpayments.com, where
you can subscribe to the showand where you'll find our show
notes.
If you enjoyed listening, pleaseshare on your social channels as
well.
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