Early last year Zoe and I explained why we were proud to be leading Flatpay’s €45m Series B. A lot has happened since then, some of which can be told in numbers: revenue growth of over 400% in the last 12 months; expanding to more than 1,400 employees across six countries; signing up a rapidly rising roster of 60,000 merchants. People are now paying for more than 5 million pizzas on Flatpay’s terminals every year. That’s a lot of pepperoni….

Flatpay was launched in Copenhagen in 2022 by Sander Janca-Jensen and Rasmus Busk. The company has since expanded successfully from Denmark to Finland, Germany, Italy, France, and now the UK – which is proving its fastest-growing market yet. Flatpay’s phenomenal numbers and clear traction have just helped it close a €145 million Series D.

The round values the company at €1.5 billion, which means Flatpay now holds the record for the fastest Danish company to reach unicorn status. Flatpay is also now the quickest-growing company ever in Dawn’s portfolio. And we’ve been doing this for nearly two decades.

Flatpay has been so successful in part because it has created and scaled a winning combination of customer-centric product, ‘old-school people-led sales’, and state-of-the-art technology.

The Flatpay team has built a product that its customers – small merchants – really need. A payments terminal with flat rates and no hidden charges – and they’ve made it accessible and easy-to-use. Their offering is ideal for all the cafes, salons, pizza joints, antique shops and more that sit at the heart of communities across Europe.

That includes my new favourite local cafe in London, Cafe Verona. While I was there last week getting a bite, the cafe’s owner, Dritan, shared a familiar and telling story.

He explained that a Flatpay rep, Adam, had arrived with a demo deck, before spending 30 minutes explaining why shifting onto Flatpay would make life easier – and sales more cost-effective – for the Cafe Verona team. By the time Adam headed back out into Soho, Dritan had signed up to Flatpay.

This is a perfect example of the success of Flatpay’s winning approach. As Flatpay CEO Sander and I explored while on stage at TechBBQ in Copenhagen last year, Flatpay uses AI to complete tasks, but its customer care setup is traditional. (TechCrunch has more on Flatpay’s ‘hands-on approach’ here).

This is a company now rapidly capturing share in the global trillion dollar payments market. In Europe alone there are more than seven million small-and-medium-sized merchants being enticed by Flatpay’s simple but compelling offer: transparent and affordable payments.

To put Flatpay’s payments market success into perspective: we co-led its competitor iZettle’s Series B in 2014 and Series E in 2017. As an investor we advised the company through its geographic and product strategy, supported key hiring, and were instrumental in its dual-track IPO and trade sale process, helping to manage conversations with the investment banks. This ultimately resulted in its IPO being preempted in a $2.2bn all-cash sale to PayPal, which was the company’s largest acquisition ever and at the time the largest European FinTech M&A.

Flatpay has however taken just two years to reach the $150m revenue level which iZettle took the better part of a decade to reach.

Now, Sander and his 1,400-strong team are setting their sights even higher. As Sander said today: “Our focus is on maintaining our growth trajectory, and taking Flatpay to the next level.”

I’ve been privileged to sit on Flatpay’s Board as the company has grown, and I’m proud and excited that Dawn is doubling down on our investment again in this round. Onwards!

If you’d like to get in touch about Flatpay, or to connect with us at Dawn, please email me on josh@dawncapital.com