Mollie acquires GoCardless in €1.1B cash & shares deal

Today GoCardless announced that they have joined Mollie, creating one of the largest European financial services companies.

As one of their earliest investors, and their largest shareholder, we at Balderton have been fortunate to see GoCardless’ exceptional team, product and business grow into one of the most popular and successful financial services products in the UK and Ireland today. Combined with Mollie, the two businesses will continue to serve millions of people and transaction billions of dollars of revenue across Europe and beyond.

Since the moment I met Hiroki and Matt over 15 years ago – it was clear that they were born entrepreneurs. Through dedication and focus on the pain points shared by their friends, colleagues and early customers, they and their co-founder Tom realised early on the need to digitise critical payment flows, starting with the challenge for small businesses of using direct debit.

After launching GoCardless, and then returning from their time in Y-Combinator to London, my colleagues Tim, Harry and I worked tirelessly to win the team over, eventually investing in the company in 2015 and then subsequently building our stake to become the biggest shareholders over the years. During that time GoCardless went from a scrappy team of generalists to one of the most exciting and impactful places to work in UK-technology. Thanks to the strong culture Hiroki built in the company, it remains not only one of the best places to work, but has also seen dozens of former GoCardless employees go on to found successful companies themselves, inspired by the people they worked with at GC. Hiroki, Matt, Tom, Grey, Harry and many of the other early employees at GoCardless were truly indispensable in the transformation of the London-technology scene in the 2010s, a cultural shift that is now reaping huge rewards for everyone in the UK.

Beyond that, Hiroki has continued to have a relentless focus on what is best for his customers, the small and now large businesses that rely on GoCardless for their digital payments. This focus has led them to join forces with Mollie, to expand not just the usage of GoCardless’ products across the continent, but also to broader the product suite so GoCardless’ customers can make their payments they easiest part of running their company.

It’s been a privilege for both Tim and I to work with the team over the last decade, and we look forward to supporting the joint company as it goes to new heights.

Thank you to everyone at GoCardless for your tireless work to make payments easier.

You can watch my discussion of the deal with Hiroki, and his journey as a CEO, below: