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Image Credits:Simpler / Founders Alex Kyriakopoulos, Rania Lamprou, and Spyros Mandekis
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Image Credits:Simpler / Founders Alex Kyriakopoulos, Rania Lamprou, and Spyros Mandekis
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Sitting in Athens during the first COVID-19 lockdown , entrepreneurRania Lamprouwatched online e - commerce exploding because of societal distancing . But merchants still struggled with low conversion rates because their checkout processes were complicated , and they had to integrate multiple providers for payment , shipping , and loyalty programs .
“ I knew there had to be a good way to deoxidize friction for both merchandiser and client , ” Lamprou tell TechCrunch . So , she thought , why not twist the checkout process into a “ checkout counter - as - a - service of process ” platform that streamline it for both merchants and shoppers ? She bulge coding in Python .
But , she was n’t alone . Tech giants Shop Pay and Bolt were in the same space , but were concenter on the U.S. market . Europe was less of a focus . Shop Pay , for model , had started back in 2014 and has now raised a sum of $ 982.1 million . So what was Lamprou going to do with her tiny inauguration , which she ’d name unproblematic ?
She brought on two friends she ’d known from university , Alex Kyriakopoulos and Spyros Mandekis , started work up the team , and they lift their first $ 1 million pre - seed round .
Today , Simpler has over 250 merchant , more than half - a - million registered shopper , and expects to increase its receipts by 10 time by the close of 2025 , said Lamprou . It of late also prove € 9 million ( about $ 10 million ) in a pre - Series A one shot to duplicate down in the U.K. , Italy and Spain . Participating in the unit of ammunition were VentureFriends , MMC Ventures and Lamda Development .
“ Yes , Bolt is a big , massive troupe , but they are focused on the U.S. , mostly with handling fraud problems , like chargebacks . That is a very giving job in the U.S. , but it ’s not so much in Europe , ” she said .
In Europe , she said , there are unlike issues : “ We have to localize and total all these different solutions , unlike providers . Every area has different needs , client preferences , different payment providers , loyalty coupons , etc . ”
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That ’s important because European eastward - commercesales increase 66%from 2019 to 2021 . Despite a impermanent declension , the grocery store is expected to keep growing , potentially reaching $ 955 billion by 2028 .
The solution turned out to be elegant .
On Simpler , merchant can outsource payments , shipping and commitment programs into one scheme , which , the company says , boosts transition and reduces complexity . For shopper , it means a one - click buying experience across multiple store and channels .
“ We ’re see potent requirement from both SMEs and enterprise - story businesses , ” she said .
While Shop Pay is exclusive to Shopify , Simpler is design for all platforms . And , unlike Bolt , which focuses heavily on the U.S. marketplace , Simpler is place the U.K. and Europe .
“ We ’ve built a robust final stage - to - remnant solution with three Order of magnitude less funding than Bolt , ” she added .
