Former C-suite execs of Adyen, Mollie back this Amsterdam-based fintech’s €2.65M seed round

Six months ago, Ernst van Niekerk – a former product manager at Adyen – announced the launch of his new startup Payaut on LinkedIn. “Today, we are live with three launching customers, and ready to take over the world of platforms. We offer state-of-the-art onboarding, payouts and flexibility to use any payment provider,” he mentions in his LinkedIn post. 

The new kid on the Dutch fintech block has big plans to scale rapidly. “We want to scale up rapidly and grow to $300 million in processed payments by 2021,” says van Niekerk. In order to achieve this goal, Payaut has recently raised over $3M (€2.65M) in a seed-funding round. 

Van Niekerk believes that with this investment, the company will have “plenty of runway for the foreseeable future.” He also claims that this funding also allows them to roll out to other countries. “Germany is up first, the rest of Europe will follow suit.”

Payaut’s Payout

This round was led by its earlier lead investor UK-based LocalGlobe, and previous investor Finch Capital also participated again. The company had earlier raised €1M, with international fund Entrée Capital participating in this pre-seed round, along with the above-mentioned investors. Entrée Capital participated in this recent round as well, along with several notable angels from the fintech and payment industry, including Robert Kraal (ex-Adyen), former Mollie-CEO Gaston Aussems, Jan-Joost Rueb, and Onno Bakker (founders eBuddy). 

Currently the co-founder and CBDO of Silverflow, Kraal previously joined Adyen back in 2010 as the COO and has over two decades of experience in the online payment segment. Aussems, on the other hand, led Mollie to unicorn status before departing.

Aussems is also actively involved in Payaut and will provide comprehensive advice about growth, strategy and execution. “Payaut has shown it offers an innovative solution which can make the lives of online marketplaces a lot easier”, says Aussems.

According to Payaut, it will use the fresh funds to scale its payment service for online marketplaces and to roll out in the rest of Europe. The company also plans to grow its team in the Netherlands to expand its product. “For new clients, it will become easier to connect to the payment solution and integrate it into their existing marketplace. It will also become simpler to quickly verify new vendors on a platform, to comply with ‘Know Your Customer’ guidelines,” the company says in a statement. The company has raised a total of $4.35M (€3.65M) in funding

All about Payaut

Founded in 2019 by Ernst van Niekerk and Gillis Haasnoot, Payaut is an Amsterdam-based fintech start-up that offers an automated payment solution for online marketplaces. Payaut ensures that money flowing through these marketplaces ends up with the right sellers or companies with SplitPayments.

Payaut claims to offer an all-in-one payment solution for online marketplaces that takes care of everything regarding payments towards the platform and the vendors it hosts. “The service functions as an intermediary between sellers and the different Payment Service Providers (PSPs). As a result, marketplaces are no longer dependent on one single PSP but instead can use multiple providers such as Mollie, Adyen or Stripe at the same time,” says the company. 

Instant compliance! 

The second Payment Services Directive regulations required these marketplaces to get licensed as a financial institution. This process, however, is too complicated and expensive for small-time marketplaces to complete. This is where Payaut helps. According to the company, as it takes care of payment traffic towards the vendors, these online marketplaces are instantly compliant with the strict European PSD2 regulation. Furthermore, Payaut helps platforms and marketplaces streamline different cash flows by providing insights through unified reports.

“Numerous online marketplaces in The Netherlands received a letter from DNB regarding non-compliance with the new European PSD2 guidelines,” van Niekerk tells Silicon Canals. 

“It was quite an unwelcome surprise. Now they have to obtain a license as a Payment Institute, a route that’s nearly impossible for many of them. But it’s either that or they have to pick and choose only a single PSP to manage their payment flow. To be locked in with one PSP really limits their scalability,” he further explains.