Good Neighbors Episode 2:
Making Payments Feel Local: Jotform + Mollie

Buying something online should be easy. Getting paid across Europe, that's where things get interesting. On this episode of Good Neighbors, I'm joined by Marcus from Mollie to talk about local payment habits, what makes a partnership actually work, and whether AI will soon be doing our shopping. Because apparently, clicking add to cart ourselves was becoming too much work. Let's meet Marcus.

So, welcome to Good Neighbor, Marcus.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

And you arrived yesterday from—you took a long flight, right?

Yeah, long flight. Eleven hours.

Good.

I know exactly what that feels like. I did it many times, from Turkey back and forth.

Now I'm starting to feel it.

You feel it? Hopefully, we'll get it out of your system.

I'll try to stay awake.

Good, yeah.

Hopefully, we'll try to get you back to the San Francisco time zone. So, again, welcome, and thank you for taking the time. I'm sure you guys have a pretty packed day, so it was good that earlier in the day we got to discuss a little bit about our partnership.

Yeah.

Our partnership.

Lovely. So, a little bit about yourself. Who is Marcus?

Who is Marcus? Marcus is a product person working for Mollie. Mollie is a Dutch payments company, but I work remotely from Sweden most of the time and then travel a lot.

Are you used to all this planning?

Yeah, I am.

You're a master packer, right?

I am. I'm a light packer. I remember the last time I checked luggage, at least.

That's awesome. Even for the trip to the US?

No, of course not. No checking luggage. That's not part of my DNA.

And you have previously worked at Klarna and, you know, Play O'Malley.

Exactly, yeah.

How was that?

I think—

You got into payments to start with, right? No other industries? Always in payments?

I've been in e-commerce and consulting a little bit before, but I've been in payments for the last decade-plus or something like that.

Okay, good. So you—

Seems like I'm stuck there now.

All about money.

All about the money.

Exactly.

That's good. Really making the world a better place.

That's good. Really making money now.

That's awesome. You're on the product side a little bit, but you're working closely with partnerships. I'm assuming one of our great partners, being partnered with Jotform. What's it like when it comes to your product thinking, and can you mention what we're doing with Jotform together? What do you pay attention to while creating partnerships on the product side in payments?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think for us—for the majority of payments companies—partnerships are a distribution channel, right? We use a lot of our partners to distribute payments to others. That's the main use case we have for the product I'm responsible for, the Connect product at Mollie. But in general, I see partnerships as a two-way street. We help partners with one thing, and they help us with another. That's really where the magic happens. One-sided partnerships never end well.

Exactly. In everything in life, right? It's give and take.

Yeah, absolutely.

What do you think about the Jotform and Mollie partnership so far?

So far, I think it's very successful. We have a lot of joint customers in Europe, and we've been very impressed with the growth Jotform has had in Europe in the last years.

Yeah. Thanks to Mollie. We're always really glad that a local payment processor like you is a partner in Europe. You probably know exactly that having Mollie as a partner gives us good reach in Europe. US-based customers use US-based payment providers, and in Amsterdam, for instance, a lot of people do their day-to-day business with Mollie. Having Mollie as a payment provider on top of Jotform gives a lot more people access to Jotform to get payments started and then use you as a complementary tool, which is amazing.

Exactly. I think one of the biggest differences between the US and Europe is that the US is, I don't know, 90 or 95% cards, right?

Very card-heavy.

Very card-heavy. While in Europe, the majority of countries have a local payment method that can be bank-based.

Is that because of security, or why do you think people select that?

I think it's more because of fragmentation. Historically, Europe has been quite separated by country. With the EU, everything is getting a lot more integrated, but payments are quite niche to the markets and stuff like that.

Okay, so you have to deal with that while thinking product-wise quite a lot.

Absolutely. I think that's one of Mollie's big selling points: being hyper-localized. You can get a local payment method in Poland, a different one in the Netherlands, one in Belgium, Sweden, Norway, and so on. It's good: one integration and one code.

Geography is very important for you guys. For Jotform, I guess we're not that geography-oriented, but that's why you guys come into play for us. Anybody can use Jotform; we offer a lot of different languages, but when it comes to payments, localization is one of the most important factors. That's really cool. Since we talked about the US versus Europe, I also wanted to ask about payment partnerships and Europe versus the US. What makes the difference? I work with both of you and other payment processors and see a lot of different things, but I want to get your perspective.

Good question. I think from a payment partnerships perspective, the biggest driver for the majority of our partners is some kind of revenue, either through a small take of the transaction or referral fees. That's one of the biggest drivers for our partners, and I guess it's our driver as well for the majority of partners. Then, of course, we have other partnerships, which are more integration partnerships and things like reporting partnerships.

Oh, reporting, yeah.

Yeah, like bookkeeping and stuff like that. Those usually aren't financial partnerships.

Mhm.

Europe versus the US is a good question. I do think Europe is more diverse between countries, obviously. The thing you just mentioned—localization—but also cultures affect things.

Oh, there you go.

A lot. There's a bigger difference in cultures across Europe, at least compared to the US, in my experience.

That's true. I've been here quite a lot, so I know a little bit. I've had my fair share of Spanish people, Swedish people, Germans—quite different, right? But in the US, of course there are differences between San Francisco, Texas, and Montana, but it's still fairly similar compared to Europe, right?

At least they speak the same language.

Speak the same language, right? That makes it easier.

That's actually a great point. In Europe, it's a different ballgame. If you go a little bit to the left of the continent, it's an entirely new lens and entirely new things to consider. The times that work, they work, right? The discipline and the friendliness—everything changes.

Everything changes. In the partner space at Mollie, we have to have a lot of multilingual partner managers.

Okay. Are you multilingual yourself?

I mean, I speak Swedish and English.

Yeah, but we do have a lot of multilingual speakers—German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and so on—to manage partnerships in all these countries.

Yeah.

That's very valid.

Because a lot of people obviously speak English, but they prefer to speak their native language.

Of course. It's easier to convince each other, and they feel closer to you. Hopefully, you feel close to me even though we're speaking English. I'll learn Swedish.

Oh, yeah.

I think the Nordics are the exception. The languages are so small, right? You only speak Norwegian in Norway, Swedish in Sweden, and so on. We're so used to speaking English that those are the few markets in Europe where you don't have specific language needs.

Right. That's good, at least. Mike, we'd be remiss if we hadn't talked about AI at all.

Oh, yeah.

That's what we briefly discussed before, while you were here. We both had a kid standing against AI-generated content. He knows what's AI-generated and what isn't, and he's definitely not a fan of AI-generated content.

He's not a fan. What do you think about the actual thing? We discussed payment and AI, and said there's still a long way to go when it comes to agents taking payments, because there are rules and regulations, especially in Europe. How soon do you think AI will take over? Is it already affecting you?

No, I don't think it has. We definitely have the capabilities to do agent e-commerce, and we do a little bit, but it's slower. Like you mentioned, in Europe there's a lot of two-factor authentication, so you can't really give agents access to cards and whatnot. You can't get agents to shop without you approving. But I always see those as solvable things. There's tokenization and different things you can do from a payments perspective. I think that's the biggest thing everyone is talking about: when agent e-commerce will take over. I think we'll be there. There will probably be pushback because historically merchants owned the relationship with the customer. Now it'll be an agent. I can definitely foresee a future where merchants start charging more for agent e-commerce sales because they don't own the end customer.

There you go.

Stuff like that. I think there will be a bet.

Yeah, that's me guessing. If you take a normal e-commerce merchant, they make money on the first transaction, but being able to upsell to these customers is important as well.

That's good. For now, listeners can create a form with AI with Jotform and then connect their Mollie.

They can.

If you really want to use AI, you can go ahead and use it. You can create the form with AI and then start collecting payments with Mollie. Let's do a little plug here, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I'll ask you about your plugs toward the end, but let's go to this segment called Neighbor to Neighbor. I want to fire off some questions. Short answer, long answer, whatever you want. First one: what makes you want to work with someone again? This can be product partnerships, obviously, anything. What are some good qualities you look for in a person, since we're still dealing with people?

What are some good qualities?

No, but I do think that, for me, the social aspect is important. Being able to have fun with people when you work is important too. We spend so much time at work in our lives, so it would be almost tragic to work with people you don't enjoy spending time with. For me, that's the most important thing.

Right. I agree. Can't agree more. I'm glad—I hope you're having fun right now.

I do. I do.

Okay, second question: something about payments most people get wrong.

Something about payments that most people get wrong? One part people underestimate and misunderstand the most when it comes to payments is cross-border.

Oh, cross-border.

Which is especially complex in Europe, where you have a lot of cross-border transactions, buying from a German merchant based in the Netherlands, and how that impacts a payment transaction from a surcharge perspective.

I didn't know that, for instance. So you have to be clear about different rules and regulations.

No, not different rules and regulations, but, for instance, scheme fees.

Oh, okay. Scheme fees.

So there are surcharges for cross-border transactions. You guys have many blogs and articles posted about that. Go ahead and check them if you're curious. That's one of the things people misunderstand. Currency conversion is probably the second one.

The second one, right? Currency conversion I'm familiar with.

That I'm familiar with.

Which is pretty straightforward, but it's almost always one of those things where people don't realize how much it actually costs.

It does, right? Yeah. Be careful, everybody out there, while doing currency exchange. Okay, one honest lesson from a partnership that didn't go the way you expected. It can be from your previous companies as well. You can be honest; we can cut it out later if you—

No, but I do think one of the things in payments in general is that there are a lot of partnerships between different payment companies and different fintechs. A lot of learnings have gone into having partnerships where, at one time, you're competitors and at another time, you're partners. My experience is that you have to tread carefully. It's easy to get on the wrong side of those partnerships, and you have to keep the relationships clear about where you partner and where you compete, because that's the nature of the game. Payments are so multilayered.

Okay, yeah. Where on one layer you can be competitors, but behind the scenes on another layer you're partners.

Oh, there you go. So, tread lightly.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, one last thing: if there's anybody else you'd like to have come to San Francisco, be our guest, or join online, who do you think our listeners could benefit from? Just name someone from your network.

Good question. Obviously, you warned me a little bit.

I did.

So...

I gave this some thought. A guy I used to work with at Klarna, who is now the chief product officer at a company called Custom.

Okay, Custom.

Yeah, they're—

What's his name?

Rasmus Falander, I think.

Rasmus Falander. Okay, from Sweden, I guess.

Swedish. He's based in Sweden, yeah.

Okay, so Rasmus.

A great guy, and I know he's here in San Francisco from time to time.

Oh, there you go. Rasmus, and now Marcus has nominated you. We'd love to have you over in our office as well.

Well, Marcus, it was a pleasure. Thank you. You don't sound jet-lagged at all. I guess I have that effect.

I got some Coca-Cola, so I've got some caffeine in me.

Awesome. Thank you for being a good neighbor to Jotform, and hopefully more to come.

All right. Absolutely. Thank you.

And enjoy your time in San Francisco. I think you're going to be here for a little while, and hopefully we'll catch up again. Thank you guys for tuning in to this episode of Good Neighbors, and we'll see you on the next one.