Adyen BV, a payments technology provider based in Amsterdam, almost doubled revenue to $350 million in 2015, but is holding off an initial public offering for now.
"We have the luxury where we don't need to raise or go public," said Pieter van der Does, Adyen's co-founder and chief executive officer. "We are different from many other unicorns in that we are profitable. What is happening around venture capital and private equity doesn't affect us."
Adyen, which competes against Square Inc., Stripe Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc.'s Braintree and other payment providers, is still sitting on the majority of the $250 million it raised from backers, including Felicis Ventures, General Atlantic, Index Ventures and Temasek Holdings. Iconiq Capital also invested an undisclosed amount in the Dutch startup, valuing it at $2.3 billion.
Since its debut in 2006, Adyen has evolved from enabling Web companies such as Facebook Inc. and Yelp Inc. to accept and process payments, to developing mobile-payment tools for clients such as Uber Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc. As those companies grew, so too did Adyen's sales, with annual transaction volume reaching $50 billion last year. The payment provider now serves more than 4,500 businesses around the world, so that they can accept Visa, MasterCard, bitcoin and 250 other forms of payment. It collects transaction fees as well as additional charges atop standard credit-card commissions.
Last spring, Adyen introduced technology that runs on point-of-sale terminals, seeking to help retailers and e-commerce startups, some of which are opening brick-and-mortar stores. Adyen's retail product, which is being introduced in the U.S. on Thursday, represented just 1 per cent to 2 per cent of the company's revenue last year. Van der Does expects this to reach 5 percent in 2016, and help to provide a full lineup of products for customers that want to sell in stores, on the Web and on mobile devices.
"It's our insurance policy that the market we're in won't dry up," the CEO said.
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