The pitch sounds almost quaint in an era dominated by slick apps and digital onboarding: Show up at a business owner's door. Shake hands. Install the equipment yourself. Walk them through it.
Yet this decidedly analog approach has propelled Flatpay, a Danish payments startup, to a €1.5 billion valuation just over three years after its founding. The company announced a €145 million growth round on November 16, led by AVP and Smash Capital, with participation from existing backers Dawn Capital, Seed Capital, and Hedosophia. It's among the fastest ascents to unicorn status Europe's fintech sector has witnessed.
Consider the velocity: Flatpay served roughly 7,000 merchants last April. By November this year, that figure reached 60,000. Revenue is expected to close 2025 at approximately €125 million—more than quadruple the prior year, according to AVP's announcement. The company crossed €100 million in annual recurring revenue in October and now adds nearly €1 million in ARR daily, TechCrunch reported.
Management has set its sights on €400 million to €500 million in ARR by the end of 2026. Perhaps more audacious: a long-term target of 10,000 employees and 10x revenue growth by 2029.
Simplicity as Strategy
Flatpay's founders identified what they saw as a glaring pain point across Europe's sprawling small-business landscape. SMEs account for 99% of all European businesses, per European Commission data, yet many grapple with opaque payment processing fees riddled with hidden costs, monthly subscriptions, and setup charges that nibble away at thin margins.
The company's answer is ruthlessly straightforward. EU merchants processing under €200,000 annually in card volume pay a flat 0.99% per transaction. UK businesses below £200,000 pay 1.49%. No monthly fees. No setup costs. Custom pricing kicks in above those thresholds, but the baseline is transparent.
Compare that with competitors like SumUp, which charges UK merchants 1.69% on a pay-as-you-go basis—or requires a €19 monthly subscription to unlock rates around 0.95%. It's a small difference on paper. For a café running tight margins, it adds up.
The Verisure Connection
What sets Flatpay apart may be less about pricing innovation than operational execution. While rival fintechs—think Stripe, Adyen, even PayPal's Zettle—lean heavily on digital acquisition and self-service onboarding, Flatpay built its go-to-market engine around something distinctly physical: field sales.
The company conducts on-site visits, installs terminals and point-of-sale systems in person, and provides human-led training. Support is available around the clock. Payouts land in merchant accounts the next day.
This wasn't accidental. The four co-founders—CEO Sander Janca-Jensen, Rasmus Busk, CMO Rasmus Hellmund Carlsen, and CTO Peter Lüth—previously worked together at Verisure, a security firm known for its door-to-door sales model. They brought that playbook with them, betting that personal interaction would resonate with shop owners and restaurateurs who might feel alienated by purely digital competitors.
It seems to be working. Flatpay now operates across six European markets: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, France, and the UK. The company employs between 1,400 and 1,500 people and plans to roughly double that by the end of next year. Job postings hint that the Netherlands could be next on the expansion list, according to TechCrunch.
The Road Ahead (And the Red Ink)
Flatpay remains unprofitable, a trade-off the company appears comfortable making as it pursues scale in Europe's notoriously fragmented payments market. Each country presents its own regulatory quirks, language barriers, and entrenched competitors. Winning share requires capital—and patience.
The latest funding follows a €45 million Series B led by Dawn Capital in April 2024, when Flatpay served just three countries and those 7,000 merchants. Before that came a €15 million Series A in June 2023. The pace of growth, and the willingness of investors to back it, suggests confidence that the unit economics will eventually pencil out.
Whether Flatpay can maintain this trajectory is the question now. The company faces formidable competition from Adyen, Stripe, and others with far deeper pockets and broader international footprints. But for the moment, at least, the old-fashioned approach—knocking on doors, showing up in person—seems to be resonating in ways that few would have predicted when digital-first became the default playbook.
Sometimes the fastest way forward is also the oldest.
