Eupago, the Porto fintech, wants to expand across Europe

Eupago, a technology company specialising in digital payment solutions, wants to internationalise its business in Europe. The company has already gained some experience in markets such as Spain and Poland, but the goal is to open branches in the betting countries. At the moment, efforts are concentrated in the neighbouring country, but France is already in their sights. As Telmo Santos, founding partner of the Porto fintech, stresses, the goal for 2023 "is to take our model abroad, reducing dependence on the domestic market". Entering new geographies is a long, bureaucratic process that requires a lot of patience. Aware of the difficulties along the way, the company continues to innovate and launch new services.

According to Telmo Santos, an application for a payment management licence has already been submitted to the Bank of Spain. The Porto fintech is convinced that to be able to work in the neighbouring country "you have to have a Spanish company". The goal is to replicate the business they develop in Portugal, that is, to give small companies digital payment tools similar to those that large companies have and, in this way, boost their online business.

At the moment, Eupago already works with Spanish clients, but the service is done from Portugal. As an example, "a Spanish retailer opened a payment account at Eupago with the focus of selling to Portuguese clients". In Poland, it was a bit the opposite. A national company asked Eupago for a solution to make payments in the Polish market. The Porto technological company integrated it with a local counterpart and thus streamlined the e-commerce activity of that firm.

Telmo Santos is aware that the internationalisation process takes time. As he recalls, "we started working in Spain in 2017". In the meantime, "we asked for the licence". There have already been contacts, from the Bank of Spain, namely with requests for information. The Spanish regulator wanted to know why Eupago wants to open activity in that market, when it can work from the country of origin. But that's not what the Portuguese technology company wants, so it's patiently waiting for authorisation.

The founders already know the process. Eupago is an institution supervised and regulated by the Bank of Portugal, but it took more than two years to get the green light to start the business. As the person in charge tells us, the project to set up the fintech started being worked on in March 2013, a year later the company was created, but it was only in April 2015 that the validation of the activity was issued.

New services

This is a whole new world. The internet has opened up numerous business possibilities in the area of online commerce and, as a result, in financial activities. Eupago has several payment solutions for retailers and/or service providers, and has recently entered the buy now pay later business. The first partnership was signed with Cofidis, allowing merchants to offer fractional payment solutions for online purchases. Meanwhile, it has also gained the confidence of Santander Consumer Finance as a financing solution.

Last year, Eupago recorded a turnover of around six million euros, a growth of 24% compared to the 4.84 million accounted for in 2021, with five thousand active accounts, 95% Portuguese. The fintech was responsible for a volume of digital payments of around 635 million euros in the last financial year, 40% more than the intermediated in the previous year. The company, which employs 35 staff and is 90% owned by José Veiga and 10% by Telmo Santos.