Exclusive: Meet Teya, the mysterious fintech unicorn formerly known as SaltPay

Teya’s Commercial Director Lawrence Hene spoke to AltFi about bringing joy back to merchants through a unified, simplified payment solution.

Image source: Teya.

300,000 customers. More than 2,000 employees. 20 offices in 15 countries. Virtually no online presence.

Teya, the one-stop solution for European businesses formerly known as SaltPay, launches today and finally introduces itself.

With ambitions that extend far beyond the scope of the name “SaltPay”, Teya is here to offer a full suite of services to small businesses, combining payment acceptance and business management tools into one ecosystem.

There is a fairly large umbrella of services that fall under the product suite, from electronic points of sale to merchant account services, a digital loyalty platform to other SaaS solutions.

But most importantly, Teya is trying to bring joy back to merchants.

For those of you who haven’t brushed up on your Latin lately, Teya (pronounced Tay-Uh) means joy, and as Chief Commercial Officer Lawrence Hene told AltFiit is a central part of the company’s vision.

“If you look at the average salesperson, they have 10 or 15 systems to deal with, and that’s not really what they’re passionate about,” Hene said.

“You don’t come into the business to handle your software or your payments. You get into business because it’s what you’re passionate about. And all these other things drain the joy.

“And so what we’re hoping to do is by offering this breadth just make it easier for the seller and give them more joy and more time to focus on what matters to them, which is really what their customers need.”

In the coming months, Teya plans to further expand the product line, and the new name – and this relaunch – looks set to serve as a bit of a formal introduction to sellers and to the industry.

At only four years old, Teya is very early in the journey for the business to become as big as it hopes to be, Hene pointed out, and that is why the time is now to show who they are and build this understanding across Europe. .

But Teya has also done a lot since it was founded by Eduardo Pontes, Andre Street and Ali Mazanderani – all formerly involved in the Brazilian payments acquirer called South America’s Square, Stone Co – in 2019.

The company has quietly worked its way up and developed an extensive user base of small and medium-sized businesses across Europe, increased headcount and clearly captured the interest of investors.

Over the past four years, it has raised $1.2 billion, most recently closing a Series C round in November 2021.

But this is not something the company dwells on.

For Teya, it really seems to be about what they can do for sellers.

So what is the goal?

Hene summed it up simply: “We try to simplify their lives”.

By centralizing the various invoicing systems, contracts and other miscellaneous admin that no one wants to deal with, Teya seeks to serve the fragmented and underserved market of small and medium business owners holistically.

“If you can join [all the services] together you can make it easier for the merchant, said Hene.

But while Teya is quite a one-stop shop, and it has acquired a number of firms to become one, including YoYo for loyalty, Loyverse for retail and MeaWallet for SoftPOS, it has also always had an open architecture that makes enable sellers to integrate other platforms and products into their system.

“What’s interesting here is that we also have a philosophy that we’re not going to do everything on our own. Small and medium-sized businesses have a wide variety of needs, and one supplier will never do everything, said Hene.

So if a seller has their own electronic point of sale, they simply cannot separate from or their own customer loyalty system, that is perfectly fine by Teya.

“It’s kind of the best of both worlds in the sense of bringing together where we add value to the merchant and they can see that, we want to offer them the suite to make their life easier,” Hene continued.

“But if something serves their business better, then we’re very happy for them to continue to do that. And I think that’s a unique approach in the market with a real recognition that it’s a suite-plus partnership.”

Business service

Along with freeing customers from the little things that add up and take away the joy of doing business, be it administrative or logistical complexities, Teya aims to package all of this into an enterprise experience for small business owners.

“[Merchants] feel underserved. They don’t really know how to formulate it, but they don’t have much satisfaction with what they do, said Hene.

“They’re trying to solve these problems on their own, and they’re looking for help. And it’s very different when you come from the corporate, there are a large number of people who are willing to help you and bring it all together. But mostly you can’t afford it if you’re a small or medium-sized business.”

With the energy of entrepreneurs and employees who have experience with small businesses, whether they work there themselves, have them in the family or work to serve small businesses, the “customer-centric” in the company is clear.

He highlighted the word “caring” as one that is used a lot in the business – it’s a core value of the brand and a central part of how the brand was built, and is evident in every element of the approach to sellers.

“With the way we build it, and bring all of this together, we can offer [merchants] that feeling and make them feel like they’re getting a business service, but actually bring it to small and medium businesses,” said Hene.

And while SMEs may have smaller budgets, smaller teams and generally be smaller, they make up a huge share of the market.

In both the UK and Europe, SMEs make up 99.9 per cent of the business population.

There are 5.5 million small and medium-sized businesses in the UK alone, and in Europe this figure rises to 24 million.

Teya has already steadily built up a significant customer base essentially without telling anyone they were even doing it, and now the potential for growth is huge.

It has built the technology, has the services — which it has teased will expand — knows it can serve its customers well and with care and is ready to, one day, help bring joy back to every small business owner in Europe.