Danish Startup FlatPay Joins Europe’s Unicorn League

Flatpay, which enables card payments for small and medium-sized businesses, has become one of the European fintech unicorns, or firms valued at more than USD one billion. This achievement has led to some of the largest exits in the region.

These include competitors like the massive Dutch payment processing company Adyen, which is still well ahead in terms of scale. But Flatpay might be able to close the gap with its new funding.

By charging small businesses a fixed transaction fee to use its card terminals and point-of-sale systems, Flatpay hopes to compete with bigger competitors.

The startup currently claims almost 60,000 customers, up from 7,000 in April 2024, due to its concentration on a sector that makes up 99% of European businesses.

The worth of Flatpay has increased at a comparable rate. The Danish business became a unicorn in just three years and is currently valued at €1.5 billion ($1.75 billion).

Sander Janca-Jensen, the CEO and Co-founder, is pleased with this achievement, but his focus is on another metric: annual recurring revenue (ARR).

“We crossed €100 million of ARR in October,”

Janca-Jensen reported. He added that this sum (close to $116 million) is adding up by nearly €1 million a day ($1.16 million).

“The plan for 2026 is to grow another 300%, so hopefully leave the year with between €400 and €500 million of ARR.”

Since the firm is still not profitable, Flatpay raised €145 million (about $169 million) in its most recent round to finance this ambitious expansion.

AVP Growth, Smash Capital, and Dawn Capital, which had led the startup’s €47 million Series B, all contributed to the round.

Flatpay’s current markets—Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom—will continue to develop due to the recently raised funds, and it will also expand into one or two more markets the following year.

The Netherlands might be the next, according to job postings, although Janca-Jensen declined to say which ones.

Currently employing 1,500 people, or “flatpayers,” Flatpay intends to treble that number by the end of the next year. In a press statement, the corporation stated that it wants to increase both headcount and revenue by ten times by 2029.

Although this may appear out of the ordinary, they are essential to the company’s in-person customer onboarding process.

The company is experimenting with speech AI agents and employs AI for real-time functionality, so it’s not completely ignoring the technology.

Additionally, Flatpay intends to enter the fintech space by offering a banking package that would comprise accounts and cards. According to Janca-Jensen, the secret is to adapt gradually so that SMB owners may tackle smaller tasks one at a time rather than being overwhelmed.