Episode 21 - Jonatan Allback
In this episode, I sit down with Jonatan Allback, CEO and cofounder of NinjaPay.
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Show notes
In this episode, I sit down with Jonatan Allback, CEO and cofounder of NinjaPay.
Jonatan comes from a very traditional background in finance at Goldman and Royal Bank of Scotland. Then he took the fintech way, being one of the first 200 employees at Adyen, where he led strategic projects and accounting management for 8 years.
After a first experience at Skipify and consulting, he co-founded and currently leads as CEO NinjaPay. NjiaPay is the Payments-as-a-Service provider that simplifies payments for online businesses in Africa. With one integration, merchants have access to a complete Payments Management Platform.
With him, we will be talking about the first hundred days in a fintech startups, how to scale numbers, but also the cross-borders market and the fintech industry in Africa.
In this episode
Jonatan Allback recounts eight and a half years at Adyen, from about 100 people to 2,000, and how its speed and freedom to decide let it serve Spotify, Netflix and eBay. He explains why he joined NinjaPay, a payments spin-off of Talk360 for multi-market African payments, and how it raised its first round. He sees Africa's legacy infrastructure as the main barrier, doubts a single cross-border solution will emerge soon, and weighs whether Europe can build its own payment rails.
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Key facts
Jonatan started in payments at the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2011 and joined Adyen in 2012 when it had about 100 people.
At Adyen he managed accounts such as Microsoft, Facebook and Netflix from San Francisco and led eBay's migration from PayPal to Adyen before leaving in early 2021.
Adyen processed about 10 billion in volume in 2012, about 360 billion in 2020 and about 1.3 trillion last year.
At Adyen, a product request could get a decision within a week, and a fix for Spotify went live within a week.
NinjaPay is a spin-off of Talk360, an international calling app for African diaspora communities, which had to integrate six payment providers.
NinjaPay met about 40 VCs in two months during a three-to-four-month raise, and Talk360's lead investor ended up backing it.
NinjaPay already had live revenue and volume when it raised.
Cross-border payments are hard because of regulation and because moving money requires strong anti-money-laundering and security controls.
Stablecoins or e-money will be the future, but a single cross-border solution may not arrive in our lifetime as countries protect their currencies.
Africa's payment infrastructure is 15–20 years behind Europe and the US, and each country needs a localised offering.
M-Pesa pioneered mobile money in Kenya but has slowed, while Wave is growing fast in Senegal.
At an investor event, none of about 60 investors had ever paid with a stablecoin or crypto; European adoption needs a regulatory push.
Europe building its own payment rails is technically possible but hard politically and commercially; co-badging alongside Visa and Mastercard is the realistic path.
Questions and answers
Why did Jonatan join NinjaPay?
Consulting for Talk360 showed him that even large African PSPs cover one market well but not many, leaving multi-market merchants with many integrations.
What made Adyen fast?
Account managers could get decisions from engineering, compliance and management within a week, without layers of approval.
What advice for first-time founders raising?
Have an experienced mentor in your corner, track every investor question and answer, and allow three to six months.
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