Antom Powers MultiSafepay Growth in European SME Market

As a division of Ant International providing merchant payment and digitisation services, Antom is driving significant growth for its European subsidiary, MultiSafepay (MSP), by combining local expertise with global technology. 

The Amsterdam-based payment service provider has expanded its merchant base to over 20,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe, representing an 11% increase since its acquisition by Ant International in July 2024.

MSP's transaction volumes have surged 44% year-on-year, reflecting robust business growth among existing customers and the addition of new top industry performers. 

The company has also seen rapid adoption of its unified payment services, with in-person payments now comprising 8% of total volume processed across retail and food and beverage sectors.

This acceleration demonstrates the potential of Antom's post-acquisition strategy, which aims to combine local market knowledge with a global technology suite to benefit merchants with innovative digital solutions.

Antom provides unified payment capabilities supporting merchants to accept over 300 local and international payment methods, including cards, e-wallets, Buy Now Pay Later options, and internet banking across both in-person and online channels and increase payment success rate.

Unlike traditional payment providers that focus solely on transaction processing, Antom aims to provide comprehensive digital solutions for merchants. For instance, Antom supports companies like Miravia, a Spanish e-commerce platform, by managing all aspects of payment collection, as well as recently announced clients such as Booking.com in Europe. 

Gary Liu, General Manager of Antom at Ant International, explains that Antom's business model differs significantly from other payment providers. "Beyond helping merchants integrate diverse payment methods and process payments, we use each transaction as the starting point to initiate new customer engagement and drive revenue for merchants," Gary says.

"Since becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant International, MSP has been integrating with Antom to help businesses improve operations and scale with confidence," Gary explains.

This integration has already driven innovation for merchant expansion, improvements in payment success rates, and infrastructure upgrades in under a year, demonstrating the power of combining MSP's 25 years of expertise with Antom's global experience.

Approaching Europe and Asia: Tailoring Strategies to Different Markets

Gary reveals that the key difference between Asian and European markets lies in how merchants approach payments. "In Europe, collecting payments is generally not a major challenge. They're well served," he says. "The cost of payments here, even for credit or debit cards, is actually pretty reasonable, even for smaller merchants." 

The company's approach in Europe, therefore, focuses less on basic payment processing and more on providing added digital value. "We don't really go to merchants and say, 'Hey, I’ll give you this POS machine.' Instead, we say, 'I have a digital service for you, such as scan-to-order and pay,'" Gary continues.

This approach bundles digital services with payments, offering merchants richer functionality through the same interface. 

For example, Antom helps merchants create digital storefronts that customers can access by scanning QR codes, allowing them to order and pay online. MSP also provides Smart POS devices to merchants.

"When we show merchants our solution, we differentiate ourselves from other payment providers because payment becomes such a natural part of it (digital experience)," Gary reveals. 

Asia presents different dynamics and opportunities. "In Asia, sometimes people still pay cash as the main means of payment. Traditional card schemes and acquiring services have seen slower adoption in some areas, largely because smaller merchants are sensitive to transaction costs," Gary explains.

This has led to a proliferation of Account-to-Account (A2A) payments across Southeast Asia, where governments have built national QR code schemes allowing merchants to accept payments at near-zero cost.

For businesses entering Asian markets, Antom helps them integrate diverse payment options to enhance flexibility and service accessibility for more customers. Beyond payments, Antom introduces A+ Rewards, an in-app digital marketing platform powered by privacy-preserving computing and AI technologies. It can connect brands with hundreds of millions of e-wallet users by embedding with leading e-wallets in Asia. 

The future of payments is account-to-account

Looking ahead, Gary believes account-to-account payments represent the future of the industry. "I do believe this global trend of account-to-account payments will be the main theme, whether it's in Asia, Europe, or Brazil," he says.

Europe has one of the strongest infrastructures for bank account coverage, with local governments building products like iDEAL in the Netherlands or Bizum in Spain. In the UK, the open banking infrastructure is also well-developed.

"Promoting account-to-account payments, sending money from one bank account to another, is something we think will be the future," Gary continues. "The role of traditional schemes may evolve."

The company is also leveraging artificial intelligence to help merchants implement and optimise payment methods. Antom has developed what it calls "Antom Copilot," an AI assistant that helps merchants through the consultation and integration process with minimal need for manual assistance, which can lower the barrier for small businesses with limited technical resources.

For travel companies, Antom will leverage Ant International’s Time-Series Transformer (TST) AI FX Model, which now offers forecasts for the company's cash flow and foreign exchange exposure on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis, achieving over 90% accuracy.

"Going forward, we’ll be able to tell how much Japanese yen you’ll potentially collect during certain periods, and how much you'll need to settle," Gary says.

This significantly reduces the amount of foreign exchange hedging required, ultimately lowering the overall cost of service.

As for Antom's immediate goals, Gary outlines three priorities: "We need to continue to build payments capability around the world. We're very strong in Asia, but globally, we're still building that."

The second focus is developing digitisation solutions on top of payment processing, such as the scan-to-order solution and digital marketing platform that allow merchants to engage customers with coupons and offers.

Finally, Antom is deepening collaboration with Ant International’s other business units and its ecosystem partners more closely, to provide embedded services including global account solutions, financing, and treasury management. 

"The merchant needs are always there," Gary says: "We want to be the one that interacts with our merchants and offers all these product services that Ant and its ecosystem have to offer, not just payment collection."

Explore the latest edition of FinTech Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, FinTech LIVE. 

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.

FinTech Magazine is a BizClik brand