It’s early days but Rubean looks like being one of the winners in the nascent European SoftPOS market. The German start-up has won a number of key partnerships including a major deal with Correos, the Spanish Post Office. Total user numbers have grown to 25K from just 6K at the end of 2022.
Rubean’s main product is PhonePOS, a softPOS application which it offers as a hosted, whitelabel, product to banks, acquirers and enterprise merchants. SoftPOS is a downloadable software application that allows any Android device to accept card payments. Rubean charges its customers a monthly fee per user and a click fee per transaction.
Rubean is based in Munich and listed on the local stock exchange. CCV, the Dutch payment gateway has a 30% stake. Competitors include Softpos.eu (Worldine), Rubean is based in Munich and listed on the local stock exchange. CCV, the Dutch payment gateway has a 30% stake. Competitors include Softpos.eu (Worldine), Mypinpad, Phos (Ingenico) and Softpay.io which works with Nexi, Elavon and others.
Management says that sales rose to “more than” €1m in 2023 on the back of several new contracts. EBITDA losses were steady at €3.5m. Nuways, a broker, projects sales growing strongly to €2.9m in 2024 but suggests that fresh fundraising may be necessary.
Rubean’s strong customer list includes Correos, the Spanish postal service, the German Sparkassen, BBVA in a contract worth €1.5m, Global Payments/KBC Group in Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia and, most recently, eMerchantPay, a British high-risk acquirer looking to expand into low-risk POS business.
Today, the bulk of Rubean’s sales are with two courier companies in Spain. Coreeos is equipping the handheld devices used by its delivery staff with Rubean’s PhonePOS application so that residents can pay any fees directly at the doorstep with their bankcard. NTT Data is the integrator. PhonePOS is also deployed with 5,000 drivers at GLS Spain, another logistics company.
Rubean has made a good start in securing some high quality customers. Profits could grow quickly as sales volumes rise but competition is fierce.
[…] It’s still early days in the emerging SoftPOS market but Rubean looks like one of the European winners, having locked down a number of solid distribution partnerships and two enterprise customers in Spain. Read more on the Business of Payments blog. […]