LONDON — Mollie was a relatively little-known company before Covid-19. Now, it's one of Europe's biggest fintechs. The Amsterdam-based onl

This little-known payments start-up is now Europe's third-biggest fintech

submited by

Style Pass

2021-06-22 10:00:06

LONDON — Mollie was a relatively little-known company before Covid-19. Now, it's one of Europe's biggest fintechs.

The Amsterdam-based online payments processor finally became a "unicorn" valued at more than $1 billion in September, more than a decade after it was founded by Dutch entrepreneur Adriaan Mol in 2004.

On Tuesday, Mollie announced it had raised $800 million in a mega financing round valuing the company at $6.5 billion. That makes it the third-largest fintech unicorn in Europe after rival firm Checkout.com, according to CB Insights data.

Mollie's founder said the company originally got its start as a text messaging business, but soon pivoted to payments after trying to integrate its own system for clients to pay their invoices.

"I was amazed at how badly that was built by the traditional banks," Mol told CNBC last year. "We created this abstraction layer to the complex systems of the banks. That was the start of our payment business."