Mollie, the Amsterdam-based digital payments business is now the third most valuable fintech in Europe, and one of the most valuable in world, after raising €665 million (£570 million). The investment round, led by Blackstone Growth, was one of the largest ever for a European company and valued it at €5.4 billion (£4.63 million), behind only Klarna and Checkout.com in the rankings of Europe’s most valuable fintechs.

Mollie was launched in 2004 and offers payments solutions designed for SMEs. However, the company also some large companies among its clients, such as Deliveroo and sportswear company Gymshark. Other clients include online fashion discounter Otrium and Wickey, which builds children’s climbing frames.

Mollie serves a total of 120,000 business a month and processed €10 billion in transactions last year. It hopes to double that total in 2021. The fintech recently launched in the UK with a service initially restricted to businesses with operations in continental Europe and a full launch is planned for the next few months.

The fintech competes internationally with Stripe, the U.S. company founded in California by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison and is valued at $95 billion, and fellow Dutch rival Adyen.

Mollie’s new chief executive Shane Happack was poached from British payments company Worldpay, acquired by Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) for $35 billion in 2019. He took over the position in April and yesterday hailed the “fantastically buoyant appetite”, for Mollie’s services. The increased demand is put down to more people paying for goods and services online and winning market share from expensive and cumbersome legacy payments processing services for SMEs.

Mr Happach added that he sees the market opportunity for future growth as a “wide open playing field”, because the world’s biggest 10 payments companies still process over half the world’s transactions. Mollie sees its service as a better alternative for many of those transactions. The fintech’s payments system uses API technology for easy integration of its payments systems with the websites and smartphone apps of the businesses it works with.