Last week we announced two senior appointments to our European business as part of our continued investment in our European growth. Jakub Zmuda steps into the role of Managing Director for Europe and Chair of the Management Board of our European subsidiary, which follows the recent appointment of Mark Buitenhek as independent Chair of the Supervisory Board.
These two appointments bring decades of experience in payments, new market entry, and accelerated business growth, complementing a broader expansion of the team at our European headquarters.
But why Europe, and why now? What are the biggest strengths and opportunities we are seeing? For us it’s a simple answer; it’s the right time for Modulr, and it’s the right time for the verticals we are focused on in Europe.
Building on a period of momentum
The past year has been a defining one for Modulr. We reached profitability as we entered our tenth year, and we now process more than 200mn transactions on an annualised basis for our over 6,000-strong and growing customer base. In January we launched in the US through our partnership with FIS and will shortly be announcing further US expansion plans. We are also strengthening our UK offering by launching new products that are at the forefront of payments innovation, such as commercial Variable Recurring Payments.
So, strengthening our team in Europe is a natural next step.
Growth of this kind needs the right team. Jakub Zmuda has been at Modulr since 2016, with strong experience of entering and scaling in new markets. Mark brings more than 25 years in payments, including global leadership roles at ING and board positions across the European Payments Council, Mastercard Europe, and SWIFT. Together they give our European business the leadership and governance to scale with confidence.
A travel platform built to scale across Europe
Our core focus in Europe has been building an unrivalled platform for travel intermediaries to run mission-critical finance operations at scale. This is an area where we have both depth and breadth of knowledge, and the capacity to grow with our travel customers.
And the opportunity in this vertical is significant.
Europe's travel economy is one of the largest in the world and continues to grow. While we hear at length about the front end of travel, behind this is an ecosystem of B2B payments that remains complex, fractured, and often poorly optimized. These B2B travel payment flows already exceed $1tn each year globally and will only keep growing. Much of this still runs on manual processes and legacy infrastructure, and lack the speed and accuracy needed to truly support business operations.
Modulr is built to be a part of the change in this industry. The global virtual card market – one of our core travel products – is forecast to more than triple by 2029 with business payments leading the way. Travel intermediaries need to settle suppliers accurately and on time, across currencies, whatever the level of disruption. That is what our platform is built to do, with more travel-focused products and features due to be launched.
With the key appointments announced this week, we can continue to build upon this great offering for European customers and ensure we are ready for our next phase of growth.
