Klarpay claims to be the first FINMA-licensed Swiss fintech to work exclusively with e-commerce, digital merchants, and social media influencers, offering cross-border payment acceptance and remittance solutions, including access to multi-currency IBAN accounts, global payment acceptance, and digital disbursement services. Founded in 2019 by the BDSwiss co-founder Mihkel Vitsur, Klarpay was one of the first Swiss fintech’s obtaining a banking license under the news Small Banks Regime. Here is our initial review.
Key Data
| Trading name | Klarpay |
| Business activity | Payment processor Merchant service provider |
| Domain | https://klarpay.com |
| Social media | LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium |
| Jurisdiction | Switzerland |
| Regulator | FINMA |
| Related individuals | Mihkel Vitsur, Chairman (LinkedIn) Beatrice Kern, Vice Chairwoman (LinkedIn) Alena Nicolai, Board Member (LinkedIn) Martynas Bieliauskas, CEO (LinkedIn) Jeff-Richard Angehrn, CFO (LinkedIn) Marc Evans, COO (LinkedIn) Christos Alatzidis, CTO (LinkedIn) Ugne Buraciene, Advisor (LinkedIn) |
| Investor | Payabl.cy Limited (prev. PowerCash21 Limited), Cyprus |
| PayRate42 | follow the Klarpay profile on PayRate42 |
Short Narrative
Klarpay AG looks like a sort of spin-off of BDSwiss, the investment firm of Jan Eric Malkus. Some of its former executives and founders are key people in bank:
- Mihkel Vitsur, co-founder and former BDSwiss Chairman, co-founded Klarpay and is its Chairman;
- Martynas Bieliauskas, former director and co-founder of BDSwiss Group, co-founded Klarpay and is its CEO;
- Christos Alatzidis, the former BDSwiss CIO & CTO, co-founded Klarpay and is its CTO;
- The former BDSwiss Chief Financial Officer Marc Evans joined Klarpay in Feb 2022 as Chief Financial Officer.
As reported by FinTelegram recently, the key people of Payabl (formerly Powercash21) are former managers of the Wirecard scheme – Dietmar Knoechelmann, his wife Ayelet Fruchtlander Knoechelmann, Ruediger Trautmann, and Frank Schoonbaert. Payabl was the absorbing legal entity of former Wirecard satellite schemes such as Inatec or Powercash21 (report here).
In May 2022, Payabl successfully organized a seed finance round for Klarpay and also invested itself. In total, Klarpay was injected with CHF 3 million. As part of the Payabl engagement in Klarpay, Ugne Buraciene, Group CEO of Payabl, was appointed as advisor to Klarpay.
The markets
According to the latest statistics from Similarweb (August 2022), almost 30% of the nearly 10,000 website visitors come from Turkey, followed by the Netherlands and Germany. So it is fair to assume that a significant portion of Klarpay customers are either merchants from Turkey and/or have Turkish customers.
Share Information
If you have any information about Klarpay, Payabl, or the acting persons and partners, please let us know via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
