Mollie is one of Europe’s fastest-growing payment companies. Its 2025 annual report, posted at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, shows a business executing well operationally, but about to embark on a far riskier phase.
Gross revenue was up 31% to €274.3 and net revenue (after deducting processing costs) grew 23% to €156m. That’s the old Mollie. The company is now being transformed with a €350m plan for pan-European expansion at the same time as closing its €1.1bn acquisition of London-based GoCardless.
“We’re here to eliminate financial bureaucracy,” says Mollie, positioning itself as the one-stop shop for European SMEs. Adrian Mol, who founded the business and named it after himself, believes there is a substantial opportunity to build a true European payment champion. You could characterise Mollie as an Adyen for SMEs with its full stack of products including online and POS payment acceptance, omnichannel reporting and support for complex use cases such as marketplaces, franchises and embedded payments for software vendors.
Mollie depends on its acquiring partners, Checkout.com and Rapyd, for processing. This keeps capex low, reduces the compliance overhead and simplifies expansion into new markets. But leaves Mollie with less control over authorisation optimisation and interchange economics than vertically integrated acquirers such as Stripe, Adyen and Checkout.
Despite the launch of a number of payment-adjacent products including lending (partnering Youlend), business accounts and loyalty, over 90% of turnover came from payment processing on behalf of over 250.000 merchant customers. “Capital revenue”, likely to be mainly commission income from merchant cash advances more than doubled to €5.7m. This could form the basis for an important new business line.
Although Mollie has begun to internationalise, the vast majority of revenue came from its heartland of Benelux (€165m) and DACH (€63.9m). Sales from other geographies (including the UK) grew more slowly, up 19% to €46m.
This may change soon as Mollie is well funded and has big plans. Management says the business is now operational in all 30 countries of the EEA plus the UK and will invest €350m in building out its product offer and team across Europe. Mollie has set up “regional development hubs” in Milan, Stockholm and Warsaw. Lisbon is coming soon.
The €350m investment excludes the Netherlands (Mollie’s home market) and the UK where it is making a major strategic move in buying GoCardless. The price is €1.1bn in stock, a rather generous 6x multiple of GoCardless’s 2025 revenues. The combined group is valued at €4.1bn (according to Mollie) and has moved its domicile to the UK while keeping tax residency in the Netherlands.
GoCardless is growing more slowly than Mollie – sales were up 18% to £155m in 2025, despite its acquisition of Nuapay, a leading direct debit provider. GoCardless is losing money and in need of capital despite having raised a total of $600m. Swapping GoCardless equity for Mollie’s stock looks sensible for GoCardless shareholders but it is less obvious why Mollie’s investors should be enthusiastic. Mollie is growing nicely with a clear path to profitability and a stronger balance sheet. Building A2A capability internally would likely be rather cheaper than paying the equivalent of €11,000 per GoCardless merchant. Possibly the prize is an opportunity to cross-sell card processing to the large UK GoCardless base.
Returning to Mollie’s 2025 results, costs were well contained and are growing proportionally to revenues. Administrative expenses rose 28% to €159m including a 19% increase in staff expenses to €106m. Employee numbers rose 16% to 857 at an average cost of €125K each.
Mollie looks to be running a tight ship. Expected credit losses were €2.7m, a steady 2% of net revenue which is very reasonable for an SME book. Chargeback provisions grew slightly to €2.9m indicating that Mollie is sticking with low-risk merchants. Operating losses slipped to €19m from €9m in 2024.
Mollie has been one of the stand-out successes in European payments over the past few years. Beginning with a simple online acceptance product, it’s now offering a complete proposition including omni-channel without (yet) needing to own the acquiring infrastructure beneath it. The future may be riskier. Managing the €350m European expansion at the same time as digesting its €1.1bn acquisition of GoCardless will be a significant challenge