Mollie partners with Plaid, hires new CTO from Klarna

Dutch fintech Mollie has partnered with Open Banking payments platform Plaid to improve the customer onboarding process, and has also appointed Koen Köppen from Klarna as its new chief technology officer.

Through the partnership, Mollie will integrate with Plaid’s advanced API to offer its users more secure and easier bank verification during onboarding, with the aim to make it easier and faster for them to start receiving payments and launch ecommerce businesses.

The fintech’s implementation of Plaid’s Open Banking solutions will kick off in the UK, with other European markets, including France and Germany, to follow in the coming months.

Rogier Schoute, Mollie’s chief product officer, said: “Our customers are at the heart of our business, and we are constantly improving and striving to offer the best payments experiences.

“Plaid shares this same philosophy with us and creates exceptional products. We’re particularly excited because the partnership will allow us to offer our customers a fantastic solution to facilitate quick and easy onboarding, not only when they join Mollie but also as they grow their business abroad. Gone are the days of the overcomplicated verification method.”

Mollie also confirmed it is currently exploring the use cases of Open Banking for payments and other financial services to provide additional value for its B2B customers.

Farid Sedjelmaci, head of European partnerships at Plaid, said: “Embedding Plaid solutions into payment service providers, like Mollie, unlocks the power of Open Banking for thousands of merchants with significantly less time and fewer resources required to deploy and manage.”

Yesterday (31 May), Mollie announced the appointment of Köppen, who joins from Klarna, where he spent more than 10 years, latterly as its CTO for the past five years.

At Mollie, he will be responsible for the reliability, scalability, and development of its technology platforms, spearheading the fintech’s tech teams.

Köppen said that having helped Klarna scale across Europe, he has joined Mollie to help it “harness its huge opportunity for growth”.

“Mollie is one of Europe’s most exciting high-growth businesses and is at the forefront of enabling small- and medium-sized online retailers to take on larger ecommerce competitors. I’m thrilled to be supporting Mollie’s aim to help businesses of all sizes to grow with effortless financial services,” he added.