Montonio team | Image credit: Montonio
Tallinn, Estonia-based Montonio, a platform for online merchants to accept payments, offer financing and handle the post-checkout experience, announced on Tuesday that it has raised €11M in its Series A round of funding.
The company also announced the launch of its offering in Poland, adding to its existing presence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with plans to add further markets this year. To support this growth, Montonio aims to expand its team across Europe.
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Investors in this round
The current round was led by Index Ventures. Existing investors Tera Ventures, ffVC and Superangel also participated. Montonio also saw participation from senior executives of Wise, Pipedrive and Bolt. Bolt’s executives include CEO Markus Villig, and CPO Jevgeni Kabanov.
Julia Andre and Jan Hammer, Partners at Index Ventures, have joined Montonio’s board.
Andre says, “Montonio addresses a really important but underserved piece of the e-commerce infrastructure – handling everything that happens from payment onwards. We’ve been impressed with the organic growth of the business, which is showing real demand and need for their product. This is yet another great example of the strength of Estonia as an entrepreneurial nation.”
Adyen’s former MD, Myles Dawson, who also backed Montonio, will be joining the company’s board. Dawson says, “Montonio’s vision to provide a comprehensive ecommerce solution, from the point of payment, is very compelling. It highlights the transition from pure payment products towards next-generation ecommerce platforms that deliver more value to merchants and enhance the experience of their customers.”
“The easiest way to accept payments in e-commerce”
Founded in 2018 by Kristofer Turmen and Markus Lember, Montonio’s platform enables e-commerce merchants to accept bank payments, and handle a range of e-commerce services, from financing to deliveries and refund management – all through API integration.
According to Montonio, sellers are routinely overcharged and forced to deal with a fragmented patchwork of multiple systems or rely on solutions that aren’t tailored to their specific market.
Markus Lember says, “Small to midsize merchants get a raw deal from traditional payments and logistics providers. Often they’re unable to accept local payment methods, are charged a premium for lower volumes, and must piece together many different solutions. This means they face higher costs, and can’t deliver top-quality customer service. We have decided to change that.”
Montonio claims to remove the need for additional layers of providers and fees to accept direct debits, ‘Buy Now Pay Later’, and other forms of payments, in part due to the introduction of open banking standards. It gives e-commerce merchants the ability to accept any form of online payments and manage all payment channels centrally through a single interface. The company offers its own services, such as bank link payments, checkout financing and instalment plans, as well as third party solutions like Stripe for accepting card payments.
On the payment page in the online store, the customer selects the bank from which they want to initiate the payment and is directed to the bank for authentication. If the customer has several accounts in the selected bank, they select the account from which they wish to initiate the payment and are shown the payment details.
If they only have one account with the selected bank, they will be shown the payment details immediately. In the last step, the customer confirms the payment and is redirected back to the online store
Currently, Montonio supports payment links of the following banks: Swedbank, SEB, LHV, Coop, Luminor, Šiaulių Bankas, Medicinos Bankas, Nordea, and OP.
In August, 2021, the Tallinn-based startup had raised €2.5M from current and former Bolt, Wise and Pipedrive executives and VC firms. Back then, it had partnered with more than 1,300 e-commerce merchants across the Baltic states and other European countries.
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