Adyen NV is a fintech that saves millions of dollars to merchants by streamlining card payment transactions. The financial technology firm, which is located thousands of kilometers from Silicon Valley, is making its founders gain much more.
The chief executive, Pieter van der Does, the technology director, Arnout Schuijff, and the former director of innovation, John Caspers, became billionaires since Adyen’s initial public offering last June, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This level of wealth creation, unusual for a European company, places Adyen, based in Amsterdam, at a level similar to technology titans in the US, Facebook, and Twitter.
The stock has almost tripled since the IPO, which shows how investors want a part of a business at the forefront in an evolving payment market, which would grow by a billion dollars until the end of 2022.
“Adyen really caused a stir when they connected with Airbnb and Uber in the early days,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst David Ritter. “The valuations of some of these companies are difficult to justify from the conventional point of view, but their growth is impressive.”
Adyen competing with the biggest ones
Adyen joins US competitors such as Stripe, PayPal and Square in pursuit of market control that facilitates the dynamics between merchants and consumers.
Caspers is the last billionaire to emerge from the company, which also has eBay and Spotify among its customers. Although it is no longer in Adyen, it still has a 4.65 percent share worth a billion dollars. It also obtained more than 30 million euros (34.3 million dollars) in Adyen’s public offering, the largest in Europe last year in the technology sector.
Hemmo Bosscher, the spokesman for Adyen, declined to comment on the wealth of the co-founders of the firm.
Also published on Medium.