from Hacker News

Payhawk is officially Bulgaria’s first unicorn

by zhan_eg on 3/1/22, 9:02 AM with 39 comments

  • by LeonM on 3/1/22, 10:31 AM

    Can't help to notice that all of [european_country]'s first unicorns are payment service providers.

    Scalapay (it), Adyen (nl), now Payhawk. And probably a few more that I'm missing here.

  • by drexlspivey on 3/1/22, 11:31 AM

    Similar recent news: Italy gets its first unicorn as Scalapay raises $497m from Tencent [1] JP Morgan Viva Wallet Deal Creates Greece’s First FinTech Unicorn [2]

    Seems like the easiest path to unicorn status is to create a country’s first mobile wallet/payment processor

    [1] https://sifted.eu/articles/italy-first-unicorn-scalapay-tenc... [2] https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/01/jp-morgan-viva-wallet-g...

  • by slavoingilizov on 3/1/22, 10:22 AM

    I'm so happy to read this (a proud Bulgarian). The founders are amazing! We need more examples like these in Eastern Europe that can promote and create an environment for entrepreneurs.

  • by giorgioz on 3/1/22, 10:31 AM

    > https://payhawk.com offers 3% cashback on card payments up to the full amount of your subscription.

    So they seem to offer corporate cards to at least in UK, Germany and Spain. There are 2 public plans at €149/mo and €299/mo. Does that mean that they will offer up to 3% cashback until you reach the 149€/mo or 299€/mo? In that case you are not really getting a cashback but getting their service for free if you spend enough...

    COMPETITORS I KNOW OF:

    https://wise.com offers free business bank accounts with pre-paid cards in a LOT of countries (US and EU and many more)

    https://mercury.com offers free business bank accounts with pre-paid cards in the US.

    https://airbase.com offers free cash back business credit cards but not accounts (it can be paired with mercury.com or wise.com for the bank accounts) in the US.

  • by artemonster on 3/1/22, 10:41 AM

    I am out of the loop: why we need so many payment processors? Why they can raise so much money and immediately valued so high? What is that they provide so valuable what is not provided anywhere else?

  • by dgellow on 3/1/22, 3:07 PM

    Not to diminish their success, but isn’t it odd to have this concept of unicorn based on a fixed threshold? Due to inflation, isn’t reaching a valuation of 1 billion $ in 2022 vastly different from 1 billion $ in 2009?

  • by miglen on 3/1/22, 2:02 PM

    Excited to be part of the Bulgarian startup history!

    Disclaimer: I work for the company and we are hiring across Europe: payhawk.com/careers

    Congrats to Italy for Scalapay!

  • by beebeepka on 3/1/22, 11:07 AM

    This just shows how out of the loop I am. Never heard of this company.

  • by Nursie on 3/1/22, 9:59 AM

    Let’s hope this story ends better than London’s mid-10s unicorn, Powa Technologies…

  • by pjmlp on 3/1/22, 10:40 AM

    Really? What about Telerik?

    Not paying attention it seems.