Adyen and Flatpay Partner to Scale Transparent SMB Payment Solutions Across Europe

Adyen has entered a strategic partnership with Danish fintech unicorn Flatpay to provide the financial infrastructure for its European expansion. This collaboration allows Flatpay to scale its transparent, flat-rate payment model for small and medium-sized businesses by leveraging Adyen’s global acquiring capabilities and unified technology stack across multiple international markets.

What was announced

The partnership establishes Adyen as the primary financial infrastructure provider for Flatpay, a rapidly growing fintech focused on the SMB sector. While Flatpay maintains direct ownership of its local merchant relationships, Adyen will handle the back-end complexity through its unified global architecture. This arrangement is designed to support Flatpay’s current operations and growth across seven key European territories: Denmark, Germany, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Italy.

By utilizing Adyen’s international licensing and deep integrations with local card schemes, Flatpay can enter new geographies without the operational burden of building localized financial infrastructure from the ground up. The integration aims to improve authorization rates and system reliability for Flatpay’s existing customer base, which currently exceeds 100,000 merchants and is reportedly growing by thousands every month.

Beyond core payment processing, the framework provides Flatpay with the capability to integrate Adyen’s Embedded Finance suite. This technical optionality allows for the potential launch of value-added services such as instant settlement, business accounts, card issuing, and cash advances. These tools are intended to facilitate Flatpay’s transition from a point-of-sale (POS) and payments provider into a more comprehensive financial ecosystem partner for small businesses across the continent.

"Flatpay was built to reduce complexity and do away with the unreasonable fees and poor customer service that SMBs have faced for decades. As we scale further across Europe, having a partner like Adyen allows us to maintain our hyper-local and personal merchant relationships while backing them with world-class, enterprise-grade technology. This partnership undoubtedly positions Flatpay even better for further growth and expansion."

Sander Janca-Jensen, CEO and Co-founder of Flatpay.

The companies involved

Adyen is a global financial technology platform that provides end-to-end payment capabilities, data-driven insights, and financial products in a single solution. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company has become a dominant force in the "unified commerce" space, serving many of the world’s leading enterprise businesses. Its infrastructure allows merchants to accept payments across online, mobile, and in-store channels globally. Adyen’s market position is defined by its ownership of the full payment stack, which removes the need for intermediary banks and legacy systems.

Flatpay is a Danish fintech unicorn that has gained significant traction by offering a simplified "flat-rate" pricing model for small and medium-sized enterprises. The company focuses on removing the hidden fees and complex structures typically associated with traditional merchant services. By combining a high-touch, personal service model with modern hardware and software, Flatpay has positioned itself as a disruptive alternative to incumbent banks in the European SMB market. The company’s rapid growth across seven countries highlights the increasing demand for transparent financial services among smaller retailers and service providers.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has extensively covered Adyen’s expansion into various sectors and regions. Recent reports include Adyen Report: 40% of Hong Kong Retailers Target Global Expansion Amid Rising Fraud Risks, which highlighted the company's research into global retail trends. The platform’s work in the Asia-Pacific region was further detailed in Adyen Partners with Limitless Technology to Scale E-commerce Gifting Across Asia-Pacific.

Innovation in the retail space was a focus when Adyen Launches 'Agentic' Suite to Bridge the Gap Between Retailers and AI Commerce Platforms, showcasing their move into AI-driven commerce. Additionally, the company's push into embedded finance was evidenced by the report ROLLER and Adyen Launch Embedded Financing to Support 3,000+ Leisure Venues, which mirrors the capabilities being offered to Flatpay in this latest announcement.

What this means

This partnership signals a significant shift in how "challenger" fintechs approach scaling. Rather than attempting to build a full proprietary banking stack—a process that is both capital-intensive and slow—unicorns like Flatpay are increasingly opting to "rent" enterprise-grade infrastructure from established giants like Adyen. This allows them to focus entirely on customer acquisition and local service while maintaining the technical reliability of a global player. For the wider industry, this puts immense pressure on legacy acquiring banks. If disruptive, flat-rate models can be backed by the same robust infrastructure as global enterprises, the traditional complexity-based profit margins of incumbent banks in the SMB sector are under direct threat. The move toward embedded finance also suggests that the "pure-play" payment processor is becoming a thing of the past, as merchants now expect a full suite of banking services from a single provider.