Meet Montonio, an e-commerce checkout answer created by a small startup primarily based in Tallinn, Estonia. The corporate simply raised a $12 million Collection A funding spherical (€11 million) led by Index Ventures. It desires to develop into the one tech companion it’s good to run a small and medium e-commerce store.
Montonio is a multi-faceted product that has been particularly designed for its house market and its neighbor international locations — however the startup thinks it might work throughout Europe. The corporate facilitates funds, integrates with a number of ‘purchase now, pay later’ financing choices, and handles deliveries and refunds.
On the cost facet, when it’s time to purchase one thing on-line, Montonio takes over and handles funds straight. The startup helps card funds via integrations with companions. Whereas debit and bank cards have develop into the default cost answer for many individuals world wide, many individuals are already paying with totally different strategies.
And that is the place Montonio turns into attention-grabbing. Within the Baltics, prospects usually provoke funds from their financial institution accounts straight. Montonio has been constructing out open banking connections in order that it may possibly provoke funds at a decrease value.
By creating these integrations in home, the corporate additionally has extra flexibility and technical management over the method. If prospects select to pay utilizing cost hyperlinks, Montonio expenses €0.05 + VAT per cost. That’s less expensive than card funds.
Montonio presently helps all main banks in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and some main banks in Finland. The startup goes to deal with Poland subsequent.
When you construct a startup that handles funds, you wish to construct a startup that handles refunds as nicely. Montonio prospects can course of refunds from Montonio’s dashboard.
Equally, as soon as a cost is processed, you wish to mechanically generate an order quantity and provoke deliveries. Montonio mechanically queries supply suppliers to generate labels. And the product will also be used to generate return labels when crucial.
Finally, Montonio desires to develop into a one-stop store for the whole lot that occurs when you click on the acquisition button. The corporate calls this course of the ‘post-checkout expertise’. For example, Montonio may act as an aggregator for various financing options.
“For every service, we’re constructing multi-threading in our product. Even while you take a look at our financing product, we have now a number of companions,” Montonio co-founder and CEO Markus Lember (pictured above) instructed me.
Whereas small and medium e-commerce retailers don’t wish to pay an excessive amount of to course of funds, they may pay for added companies and a easy product that replaces a patchwork of cost and e-commerce companies. Montonio presents plugins for WooCommerce, Prestashop, Magento 1 & 2, Odoo, Voog, OpenCart and CsCart. There’s additionally a programming interface for customized integrations.
And it appears to be doing nicely in Estonia as round half of internet buyers have interacted with Montonio already. It’s going to be attention-grabbing to see if the corporate can reproduce the identical numbers in different markets.
“The crew is greatest in school, very technical and really agile. The natural traction is thru the roof. There are very compelling market developments that can open up the market and Montonio is simply anticipating this shift,” Index Ventures companion Julia Andre instructed me.
Along with Julia Andre, Jan Hammer from Index Ventures and Adyen’s former managing director Myles Dawson are becoming a member of the board. Earlier traders Tera Ventures, ffVC and Superangel additionally participated in immediately’s funding spherical.
