Recharge.com: Growing globally with Adyen Acquiring
Amsterdam based Recharge.com makes online top-ups fast, safe, and simple for consumers around the world. In a wide-ranging chat with their CFO, Linda Faassen, we talked about payments, tech, and diversity in the European scale-up scene.
Updated August 2021
The lucrative top-up market has a disruptor.Recharge.comis a global marketplace for branded payments. Available in 130 countries, and with a recent successful funding round set to ensure further expansion, Recharge.com's ethos is to make online topups possible for anyone, anywhere, at anytime.
We sat down with their Amsterdam-based CFO, Linda Faassen, to talk payments, tech, and diversity in the European scale-up scene.
With payments, what were the biggest challenges or initial concerns you had?
We asked ourselves: ‘How can we achieve global coverage with the best payment acceptance rate and the lowest possible fraud, but also be locally relevant for customers?’
We were looking for a payment provider with the perfect combination of globally accepted cards and local alternatives, so we could maximize our penetration in each market.
Adyen has full ownership over the entire payment flow, so they can connect businesses directly to Visa, Mastercard, and key local payment methods. This is one of the reasons why we wanted to work together. We believe that we can optimize our current acceptance rate and our partnership with Adyen will help us expand to new markets.
How have payments helped you scale as a business?
At Recharge.com the payments team is focused on the growth and optimization of our current payment acceptance rates, while maintaining the lowest fraud rate possible.
To handle an increasing number of orders from an increasing number of locations, we’ve created our own software solution based on open source technology. We feel this fits well with Adyen’s self-maintained platform.
What has using direct acquiring meant for your growth journey?
We want to benefit from local market conditions and achieve higher conversion rates for our customers. For Recharge.com, it’s important that we invest in payments and increase local relevant payment methods worldwide.
A payment gateway that offerslocal acquiringand risk management in one platform is unique, and something we were to utilize. Previously, we were processing our US payments cross-border, which resulted in relatively low authorization rates. With Adyen, we have local acquiring and processing via our US entities which was a huge milestone in our international roll-out.
How important is it for you to get settled in multiple currencies?
With the growth of our company, this became increasingly important, because we also receive our supplier invoices in different currencies, contributing to better cash management. Invoices must also be paid to our brand partners in time, so the speed of payout is crucial.
Using Sales Day Payout, payouts and reports are based on day totals. This simplifies the reconciliation process and it allows for predictable cash flows.
What results have you noticed since you started processing?
Straight away, our partnership with Adyen resulted in a higher payment acceptance rate as a result of dynamic rerouting.
Also by usingRevenueProtect, we saw that we were easily blocking bad traffic pre-authorization. Besides that, our chargeback win rate was elevated by at least 40% compared to our previous win rate while not changing anything in the challenge process.
"Our chargeback win rate was elevated by at least 40%"
While we’re fishing for compliments, what does the Recharge.com's payments team like about working with us?
Every day, our payments team uses theRevenue Accelerate reportto monitor acceptance rates on all our websites. The retry report and the acquirer conversion overview are awesome reports to drill down further into payment methods, acquiring bank, and response codes, which helps us analyze and optimize our data.
Outside of payments, what pressures do you encounter as part of the European scale-up scene?
We’re aware, and tentative in our approach, of each phase in the company's lifecycle and what this brings in regards to leadership, culture, individual and company needs, as well as potential problems to overcome. I believe that anticipating, and proactive awareness of, each phase of growth is a global process, not just Europe focused. There is a rising acknowledgment of the importance of company culture and authentic leadership.
What's mostly underestimated, with the digital transformation of the economy and society, is the change in mindset and communication style that comes along with it. We’re already seeing leadership change in many cases from a male transactional style to a female collaborative style.
On the subject of male and female ways of working - what are your thoughts as a leader? What are the challenges?
In fast-changing organizations, female leadership is becoming increasingly important, and it’s my belief that female leaders are really good at creating a culture of collaboration and empathy. It is important that we take good care of ourselves but also of each other, this is what we believe and pursue within our team.
Creative Group (Now Recharge.com) growing from 25 to 100 employees brought with it various challenges but also opportunities. Through these, I was able to develop myself as a leader. We’ve had to be agile and needed to implement new ideas quickly. This required participative decision-making and sensitivity to others. It’s important to recognize each individual and their talents and give them a safe environment to experiment and learn.
The value of embracing diversity and its positive influence on society goes beyond specific female and male leadership. It’s in my opinion that we should embrace the diversity of authenticity, allowing everybody to be different, and being curious about this difference. A diverse team means a broader range of ideas for innovation.
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