The Secret to More Sales No Extra Cost!

Boost your e-commerce conversion rate and expand globally using localized payment gateways 

Full transcript of YouTube episode of Shaping Commerce in which we sit down with Rick Emondts from Mollie to discuss how the leading European payment provider is conquering the Polish market. Mollie proves that true e-commerce business success comes directly from deep community immersion and a strict hyper-localization strategy. 

Premiered Mar 31, 2026 IronPlane eCommerce Development

"We offer an all-in-one payment solution. We don't want to be an international payments company that comes to Poland. We don't believe in attacking the market with very big out-of-home advertising as a business, right? With a 25% increase in sales without any extra marketing cost, e-commerce is going more and more borderless."

- Rick Emondts of Mollie

[music]

Introduction

Łukasz Rzewuski (Shaping Commerce): Today, we are speaking with Rick, a representative from Mollie – leading payment providers established in Europe. Mollie is well known in Europe but many Polish merchants have had no chance to meet you guys. Could you introduce the company to the Polish e-commerce community?

Rick Emondts (Mollie): Of course. Thanks a lot, Lucas. Nice to be here today. Unfortunately, they haven't had the chance yet to meet us, but that's why we're here now. So, Mollie is an international payment service provider. That means that we offer an all-in-one payment solution for all of your payment methods. So, if you want to be local in Poland with Blik or P24 or if you want to grow internationally to Spain or Sweden, we've got you covered. And on top of payments, we also are adding additional financial services.

Entering Poland: Why a hyper-localization strategy beats massive advertising

Łukasz Rzewuski: Poland . . . is Poland a mid market? I think it is – we have strong local players. What was the biggest challenge for Mollie when you entered our market?

Rick Emondts: It's an interesting question because I think in Europe no market is the same. Each market has very local tendencies and indeed Poland is very unique. So, we see here – of course it's imperative that you have Blik covered, but it doesn't just stop there, right?

So, Mollie prides itself in being a hyper-localized player. What that means is that we don't want to be an international payments company that comes to Poland. We want to feel like a Polish experience, so the moment when someone lands on the website it's in Polish. Dashboard, onboarding – if you talk to our support you'll be assisted in Polish. So, you want to give that Polish feel to the consumers, to the customers.

To your question what's then the biggest challenge – I think that is very generally brand awareness. So we’re thinking of building in Europe a well-known fintech, but to really reach the merchants which are from small, mid, and up markets we need to have much more local presence, which is why we're also at events like today, right? – to build our presence and really immerse ourselves in the local community. So, we don't believe in attacking the markets with very big out-of-home advertising – we’d rather immerse ourselves in these relevant ecosystems like Magento today and then get our brand out there.

Łukasz Rzewuski: When it comes to consumer behavior, do you see big differences between Western and Polish customers? You mentioned Blik. Is there anything else you noticed?

Consumer trends: Local payment champions (Blik, Swish) and the rise of buy now, pay later

Rick Emondts: Yeah, so I think there's a couple of really interesting trends in this sense. I would say first of all almost every company has a – every country has a local champion. So whether it's Blik here or Swish in Sweden, that's pretty common that we see everywhere. And then what you see on top of that is a very big increase in buy now, pay later. So, of course you have here also your local buy now, pay later solution even via Blik, but also Klarna is rapidly growing and that's a trend we see across many markets because consumers are looking for a more flexible way to do their payments. And then third, it's all about speed, right? You want to be able to convert well, so making sure they have Apple Pay, Google Pay, Your Wallets available on your web store is really critical for conversion, and that's also stuff that we're really focused on.

The need for speed: Driving a 25% conversion increase through the Hyvä partnership

Rick Emondts: For example, our partnership with Hyvä really focuses on improving the front end on the Hyvä side. It's all about making it quicker, and the key thing as part of that is to have a quick checkout. And we've seen some incredible results with the Mollie Hyvä customers – like of 25% conversion increase – which, as a business, right, “We have a 25% increase in sales without any extra marketing cost?” It’s like the best you can have.

Łukasz Rzewuski: Yeah - that's great, right? It moves the needle, right?

Rick Emondts: Exactly.

Borderless E-commerce: How SMBs are expanding cross-border with local payment methods

Łukasz Rzewuski: You mentioned that you got us covered when entering new markets. Is this the trend you observe within Polish customers? They're doing much sales outside Poland to Western Europe?

Rick Emondts: Definitely. And I think it's an increasing trend in e-commerce. Of course, there's – it depends a little bit on the sector you focus on. You still have a lot of smaller businesses that are focused 100% domestically for sales. But particularly with, let's say, the SMB segment and the more the M side, the midsize market, more and more are going cross-border and that's not only going towards the west but also towards the east.

I think typically we see that right now e-commerce is going more and more borderless, and to be successful borderless you need to have pay methods that the consumer of the country is expecting. So if you want to go to Germany, you shouldn't be only able to pay with Blik – you want to have your local methods. And the same thing if you're a Polish website and you have Dutch consumers. If I can pay with iDEAL as a Dutch consumer, I will convert very quickly. If I need to go towards different methods, I become much more skeptical. And I think in Poland it's very common now that we see, with the explosive market growth overall and in e-commerce, that this is an increasing trend.

Łukasz Rzewuski: All right. And going to the end since we have you here, can you share some light on your road map for let's say the next 12 months? Is there anything that customers should be excited about?

What’s Next: Mollie’s 12-month roadmap, platform integrations, and the new Warsaw office

Rick Emondts: Of course! There's always things to be excited about. [Laughter] So there's a road map. So we're now establishing our local teams. We got our first Polish people that have started. We're setting up our office in Warsaw. So we're really in here for the long term. I think over the next 12 months we're going to continue improving our products. We already have a very strong local proposition, but we'll look to expand it with additional integrations into local platforms because today we cover, for example, Magento and some of the other platforms, and we want to make sure that we cover the needs for all Polish merchants. And on top of that, you're going to see us at a lot of events, and hopefully soon on a lot of your checkouts and bank statements because that's a good sign that we’re really in the market. So it's an exciting road map. We're here for the long term. We're here to grow.

Łukasz Rzewuski: All right. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Crossing fingers for your success and future endeavors, and enjoy the rest of the conference.

Rick Emondts: Thanks a lot.

Łukasz Rzewuski: Thanks.