Can't help to notice that all of [european_country]'s first unicorns are payment service providers.<p>Scalapay (it), Adyen (nl), now Payhawk. And probably a few more that I'm missing here.
Similar recent news:
Italy gets its first unicorn as Scalapay raises $497m from Tencent [1]
JP Morgan Viva Wallet Deal Creates Greece’s First FinTech Unicorn [2]<p>Seems like the easiest path to unicorn status is to create a country’s first mobile wallet/payment processor<p>[1] <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/italy-first-unicorn-scalapay-tencent-series-b/" rel="nofollow">https://sifted.eu/articles/italy-first-unicorn-scalapay-tenc...</a>
[2] <a href="https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/01/jp-morgan-viva-wallet-greece/" rel="nofollow">https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/01/jp-morgan-viva-wallet-g...</a>
I'm so happy to read this (a proud Bulgarian). The founders are amazing! We need more examples like these in Eastern Europe that can promote and create an environment for entrepreneurs.
> <a href="https://payhawk.com" rel="nofollow">https://payhawk.com</a> offers 3% cashback on card payments up to the full amount of your subscription.<p>So they seem to offer corporate cards to at least in UK, Germany and Spain.
There are 2 public plans at €149/mo and €299/mo.
Does that mean that they will offer up to 3% cashback until you reach the 149€/mo or 299€/mo?
In that case you are not really getting a cashback but getting their service for free if you spend enough...<p>COMPETITORS I KNOW OF:<p><a href="https://wise.com" rel="nofollow">https://wise.com</a> offers free business bank accounts with pre-paid cards in a LOT of countries (US and EU and many more)<p><a href="https://mercury.com" rel="nofollow">https://mercury.com</a> offers free business bank accounts with pre-paid cards in the US.<p><a href="https://airbase.com" rel="nofollow">https://airbase.com</a> offers free cash back business credit cards but not accounts (it can be paired with mercury.com or wise.com for the bank accounts) in the US.
I am out of the loop: why we need so many payment processors? Why they can raise so much money and immediately valued so high? What is that they provide so valuable what is not provided anywhere else?
Not to diminish their success, but isn’t it odd to have this concept of unicorn based on a fixed threshold? Due to inflation, isn’t reaching a valuation of 1 billion $ in 2022 vastly different from 1 billion $ in 2009?
Excited to be part of the Bulgarian startup history!<p>Disclaimer: I work for the company and we are hiring across Europe: payhawk.com/careers<p>Congrats to Italy for Scalapay!