The Exchanges

Q What's it like building a company based in the Netherlands? What is it like hiring people? Where do you hire people? Do you make them come to the office? How has the culture changed?

A Yeah. So building a company in the Netherlands or starting in the Netherlands at least, at least, um, makes you aware that you need to go international from day one. Like the Netherlands is a super small country. Um, you can never build a very successful business just based on, uh, population there. So we immediately went, uh, international, but in the beginning, uh, we hired mostly into Amsterdam. Uh, so we had a very strongly focused Amsterdam operation and that shifted like Uh, 10 years ago. So 10 years ago, we went to the US. We started to build our team here. Uh, there's a very significant base here now in the US. We have more than 800 people, uh, working in the US. Uh, so it's our, um, largest market outside of Europe. Uh, growing fastest is already one third of our total revenues at the US. And I find that, um, very interesting to see also how that has changed our company. We have a different perspective. On how we should serve, um, merchants. I think not being local, uh, in the beginning did not help to solve the real problem. So you need to have product engineering very close to where customers are. And I think when we made that shift, uh, we got more traction and with the current setup with like over a third of our revenues already in the US, uh, we see that we win, uh, a lot of domestic brands. Um, and I think we're also proving that payments is not a commodity becau…

AI assessment note: “makes you aware that you need to go international from day one”

Q said something along the following lines? Ah, 46% EBITDA. That's a lot. We don't need that. You know, how much of that seven hundred and forty three million would grow the business if we just took it to zero? Told our investors for the next few years, like, could I grow twice as fast? Is that better in the long run? How, why, why be this profitable? I guess maybe.

A Yeah, I think profit is for me the same as value. So if we deliver value and also have premium pricing, uh, merchants are willing to pay a premium and pay the, uh, Basically for the value that we bring. And I would be afraid that if we would just go for the lowest price, because I think we potentially could, uh, we run at the lowest cost as an infrastructure. Um, you would basically destroy a lot of value that's in, uh, still in there. And, um, I'm not sure if you would just go for price, um, that you have the right conversations about the value that you bring. So that's the reason why we haven't done that so far. Um, but it's of course a question that you should always ask yourself, like, can you invest more in the business to accelerate growth? And that's still the trade-off that we're making every day. Our main focus is on revenue growth. If we can invest, if we see an opportunity, we will, but we have a long-term view there.

AI assessment note: “can you invest more in the business to accelerate growth? And that's still the trade-off”

Q financial censorship and de-platforming. And the way that it, I think it came on our radar was there was these truckers in Canada that were protesting COVID a few years ago, and they effectively got de-platformed from financial services. Um, How do you balance that as a company that becomes this critical artery to send, you know, money back and forth and process money for millions and millions of people?

A Yeah. I think one of the ways how we want to do this is work with a lot of platforms that basically have these, um, truckers as an example, as a customer. And I think the unique thing of these platforms, they have a lot of knowledge about these people. And I think combining that knowledge with, uh, providing financial technology is a very good outcome. Because then they have their knowledge about the industry, about, um, the business data of these people, uh, combined with what we know, uh, is needed in the financial industry, everything around, um, money laundering prevention, terrorism financing. If you combine that, I think you have a very strong proposition. Um, and I think that's the answer to the more traditional players like the banks that also, I don't, Always have the knowledge to do this at scale. I think that's what we have been automating, uh, from the start, like everything around AML, machine learning. We we've invested highly in that to, to build something very scalable. And that's what we want to offer to our companies.

AI assessment note: “everything around, um, money laundering prevention, terrorism financing.”

Q Do you find it, um, is there differences in employee issues, employee quality between America and Europe?

A I think there are very talented people in both markets. Um, I think the, uh, honestly, the technology market, of course, in the US is way more competitive than Europe. I think we benefit from the fact that in Europe, we are one of the few companies. Um, so yeah, it's relatively easy. We're our brand awareness in, in, in Europe is Higher than in the US. That's one of the things that we're working on right now to make sure that more people get to know us. In the end, we're a business-to-business brand, so that requires additional, um, push to show what we do, but we work for the largest companies globally, whether that's online, we work for Google, Meta, Microsoft, for retail, H&M, Nike, Gap, so we work for the best brands, and by also having them as referral customers, it is better to get into, A country like the US.

AI assessment note: “I think there are very talented people in both markets.”