Danish fintech company Flatpay is turning heads with a growth strategy rooted in a method many believed fintech had left behind: door-to-door sales. This approach is pivotal to their ambitious goal to triple their Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to €400-500 million by the close of 2026. While most startups are banking on digital automation, Flatpay is doubling its workforce and leaning on the human element to capture a broad market of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Let’s examine how this company is challenging fintech norms.
The Numbers Speak Loudly
Flatpay has seen impressive growth since its inception in 2022. In under four years, they’ve swelled their ARR from €12 million (2022) to more than €100 million by October 2024. Headquartered in Denmark, the company currently supports about 60,000 customers, the vast majority being SMEs. And they don’t plan to stop there, Flatpay expects to grow by nearly €1 million in ARR daily. By 2029, they project a tenfold increase in both ARR and workforce size, aiming to employ 10,000 people across the globe.
Why Door-to-Door?
Unlike many competitors relying on digital marketing or paid ads, Flatpay opts for a high-touch, in-person strategy. Teams visit business owners directly, demonstrating Flatpay’s point-of-sale systems on the spot. Sander Janca Jensen, the CEO, believes personal interaction is essential in building trust with SMEs, who often hesitate to adopt new payment technologies through faceless online channels.
This approach, while labor-intensive, allows the company to explain pricing transparently and onboard clients effectively during the very first visit. It’s not cheap, Flatpay’s customer acquisition costs reflect this, but management argues that it’s a faster and more sustainable route to converting clients who stick around long-term. The human connection, as it turns out, builds loyalty better than emails and chatbots.
Key Insights into Flatpay’s Strategy
Flatpay’s business model is more than just face-to-face sales. They target the 99% of European businesses that payment-processing giants often overlook. With a flat-rate pricing system and services tailored for smaller players, they aim for simplicity where competitors emphasize scalable complexities.
1. Customer Benefits
- Flat Transaction Rates: Fair pricing appeals greatly to small businesses tired of hidden fees from bigger platforms.
- Hands-On Onboarding: By demonstrating terminals and services during visits, Flatpay makes adoption seamless for its target customers.
- Daily Settlements: Clients receive funds quickly, a key incentive for cash-strapped businesses looking to improve cash flow.
2. Workforce Expansion
- Flatpay currently employs about 1,500 people. To execute their plans, they aim to double that number by the end of 2026. Their strategy revolves around investing in robust, on-the-ground sales forces trained to convert leads more effectively than digital-only marketing ever could.
3. Regional Expansion
- Beyond their stronghold in Denmark, Flatpay is concentrating on growing in regions such as Finland, Germany, France, and Italy. There’s also talk of geographic scaling to entirely new markets in 2026.
Tips for Adaptable Entrepreneurs
Startups enamored with automation can learn from Flatpay’s balance of tech reliance and personal interaction. If you’re building a business with heavy customer onboarding, consider this:
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Don’t Overlook Human Interaction: While tech-driven solutions scale faster, nothing replaces trust built in person. Particularly for industries targeting SMEs, listening to individual needs matters.
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Track Cohort Performance: Flatpay meticulously measures retention rates for customers onboarded via its in-person model to justify spending.
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Invest in Sales Teams: Sales training and product demonstrations create sharp, confident teams capable of converting even hesitant leads.
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Scale Thoughtfully: Instead of rushing growth, Flatpay ties expansion to regions where SMEs are underserved by the existing payment ecosystem. This ensures they enter markets as a welcome newcomer instead of a redundant player.
Mistakes to Dodge
Flatpay’s success has enough moving parts to make errors inevitable. Here are oversights other entrepreneurs must steer clear of:
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Mismanaging Costs: Personal sales models like Flatpay’s are expensive. Without sound metrics to evaluate return on investment, you could burn through funds before hitting profitability.
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Neglecting Employee Morale: Door-to-door sales require persistence. High turnover can eat into growth if team members feel undervalued or misaligned with company goals.
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Focusing Only on Growth: Flatpay’s plan revolves not just around revenue expansion but operational balance. Avoid overextending your runway to chase unsustainable metrics.
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Ignoring Regional Nuances: Just because Flatpay succeeds in Scandinavia doesn’t mean its model will translate unchanged to a different business culture. Tailor approaches for specific markets.
The Bigger Picture
Flatpay doesn’t just sell payment solutions; they prioritize their role as an SME advocate. Their in-depth understanding of small business challenges, combined with a solution-focused mindset, has set them apart from passive, digital-first fintech competitors.
What’s remarkable is how their contrarian approach, unfashionable to some, has proven effective enough to prime them for European domination. They challenge entrepreneurs, especially in fintech, to rethink client acquisition strategies that rely too exclusively on algorithms and dashboards. The humans being targeted? They still care about being heard.
Conclusion
Flatpay proves that “old-fashioned” doesn’t mean antiquated. By embracing a high-touch sales approach and demonstrating their product’s value directly to end users, they disrupt the narrative that fintech must be relentlessly digital-only to scale. For startups grappling with their own scaling challenges: Flatpay’s bet on human connections holds valuable lessons.
Entrepreneurs seeking to build trust with traditionally underserved markets can benefit from adopting some of Flatpay’s direct strategies. And if their €400-500 million ARR target for 2026 becomes a reality, they won’t just reshape European fintech, they may set new standards for service-focused entrepreneurship globally.
FAQ
1. What is Flatpay's growth goal by 2026?
Flatpay aims to triple its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to €400-500 million by the end of 2026. This ambitious goal is being driven by an in-person, door-to-door sales strategy targeting SMEs. Read more from Sifted
2. How has Flatpay grown since its founding?
Flatpay, founded in 2022, grew its ARR from €12 million in its first year to more than €100 million by 2024. The company serves over 60,000 customers, predominantly in the SME market. Learn more about Flatpay’s growth at Startup Researcher
3. Why does Flatpay use a door-to-door sales model in fintech?
Flatpay believes that face-to-face interaction builds trust with SMEs. By directly explaining pricing and onboarding small businesses, they reduce skepticism about payment technologies and improve client retention. Explore insights from TechCrunch
4. What makes Flatpay's services appealing to small businesses?
Flatpay offers flat transaction rates, hands-on onboarding with demonstrations, and daily settlements to improve cash flow. These features cater specifically to SMEs that are underserved by larger payment processors. Discover more at AVP Capital
5. How does Flatpay’s pricing model differ from competitors?
Flatpay uses a flat-rate pricing system with no hidden fees, making it simpler and more transparent than competitors' scalable pricing models that often include unexpected costs.
6. What is Flatpay’s workforce expansion plan?
Flatpay plans to double its workforce from 1,500 employees to 3,000 by the end of 2026. The company emphasizes training its sales force to better serve SMEs through personalized customer acquisition methods. Learn from TechFundingNews
7. In which regions is Flatpay expanding?
Currently based in Denmark, Flatpay is focusing on markets in Finland, Germany, France, and Italy. It has plans for further geographic expansion to new regions by 2026. Check regional strategies at International Finance
8. How is Flatpay funding its expansion?
Flatpay recently raised €145 million in a Series C round, led by AVP Growth and Smash Capital. This funding supports their scaling efforts across Europe and potential global markets. See details from TechBuzz
9. What challenges does Flatpay face with its high-touch model?
The door-to-door sales strategy is labor-intensive and has higher customer acquisition costs compared to digital methods. Maintaining employee morale and avoiding high turnover in an intensive sales environment are also critical challenges.
10. What lessons can startups learn from Flatpay?
Flatpay demonstrates that personal interaction can be a more effective approach than digital-only sales, especially in markets like SMEs. Startups should balance scalable automation with personalized customer acquisition based on their user base needs. Read about this balance at Flattening Costs
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta Bonenkamp's expertise in CAD sector, IP protection and blockchain
Violetta Bonenkamp is recognized as a multidisciplinary expert with significant achievements in the CAD sector, intellectual property (IP) protection, and blockchain technology.
CAD Sector:
- Violetta is the CEO and co-founder of CADChain, a deep tech startup focused on developing IP management software specifically for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data. CADChain addresses the lack of industry standards for CAD data protection and sharing, using innovative technology to secure and manage design data.
- She has led the company since its inception in 2018, overseeing R&D, PR, and business development, and driving the creation of products for platforms such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, and SolidWorks.
- Her leadership has been instrumental in scaling CADChain from a small team to a significant player in the deeptech space, with a diverse, international team.
IP Protection:
- Violetta has built deep expertise in intellectual property, combining academic training with practical startup experience. She has taken specialized courses in IP from institutions like WIPO and the EU IPO.
- She is known for sharing actionable strategies for startup IP protection, leveraging both legal and technological approaches, and has published guides and content on this topic for the entrepreneurial community.
- Her work at CADChain directly addresses the need for robust IP protection in the engineering and design industries, integrating cybersecurity and compliance measures to safeguard digital assets.
Blockchain:
- Violetta’s entry into the blockchain sector began with the founding of CADChain, which uses blockchain as a core technology for securing and managing CAD data.
- She holds several certifications in blockchain and has participated in major hackathons and policy forums, such as the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum.
- Her expertise extends to applying blockchain for IP management, ensuring data integrity, traceability, and secure sharing in the CAD industry.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the "gamepreneurship" methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the POV of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.
About the Publication
Fe/male Switch is an innovative startup platform designed to empower women entrepreneurs through an immersive, game-like experience. Founded in 2020 during the pandemic "without any funding and without any code," this non-profit initiative has evolved into a comprehensive educational tool for aspiring female entrepreneurs.The platform was co-founded by Violetta Shishkina-Bonenkamp, who serves as CEO and one of the lead authors of the Startup News branch.
Mission and Purpose
Fe/male Switch Foundation was created to address the gender gap in the tech and entrepreneurship space. The platform aims to skill-up future female tech leaders and empower them to create resilient and innovative tech startups through what they call "gamepreneurship". By putting players in a virtual startup village where they must survive and thrive, the startup game allows women to test their entrepreneurial abilities without financial risk.
Key Features
The platform offers a unique blend of news, resources,learning, networking, and practical application within a supportive, female-focused environment:
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Impact and Growth
Since its inception, Fe/male Switch has shown impressive growth:
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Partnerships
Fe/male Switch has formed strategic partnerships to enhance its offerings. In January 2022, it teamed up with global website builder Tilda to provide free access to website building tools and mentorship services for Fe/male Switch participants.
Recognition
Fe/male Switch has received media attention for its innovative approach to closing the gender gap in tech entrepreneurship. The platform has been featured in various publications highlighting its unique "play to learn and earn" model.