It Took a $1 Billion IPO for People to See Why Adyen Matters
- Adyen has grown processing payments for Facebook, Airbnb, Uber
- Company gained from global approach, freedom from old tech
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For Pieter van der Does and Arnout Schuijff, co-founders of Adyen BV, replacing PayPal Holdings Inc. as EBay Inc.’s payment processor was a major coup. But the Dutch firm’s June 13 share offering on the Euronext stock exchange, announced Tuesday, represents the fulfillment of a decades-long dream.
Van der Does and Schuijff helped establish one of the first online payment processors, Bibit, back in the 1990s dot-com boom. Royal Bank of Scotland acquired it in 2004. But in 2006, Bibit’s founders checked out to form a new venture -- Adyen -- and this time, Van der Does told Bloomberg in a 2016 interview, they had no intention of ever selling out.