PopCap Goes With Adyen - Interview With Adyen's Peter Caparso

Peter Caparso is the North American President of Adyen, a global payment solutions provider. He has over twenty years of experience in the technology and international commerce and payments sector. Peter joined Adyen from the Royal Bank of Scotland, where he headed up the global e-commerce sales and account management team. Peter was nice enough to grant Benzinga an exclusive interview. The transcript of our conversation can be found below.

This interview is also available as an episode of the Benzinga Podcast

I would be glad to. Adyen is a global payment provider. Its roots go back to a company called Bibit, which was founded in the late 1990s. Bibit was a Dutch payment provider that came up with the idea of setting up localized connections into many different European banks. By doing this, the company was able to gain access to localized European payment methods and get the lowest cost for customers. Bibit executed on this business plan quite successfully and by 2004, the company was 100% acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland RBS.

Most of the core management team at Adyen came from Bibit. The management team has all worked together for close to twelve years. We happened to be at a conference in Brussels in 2006 and we all ran into each other at a coffee shop and came up with the idea of building a better payment provider. That was the genesis of Adyen.

The company was founded in December of 2006. We achieved profitability in about 30 months and are currently enjoying double-digit growth on a month over month basis. In my opinion, we are bringing the best technology to the marketplace, in addition to the most flexible and transparent solution to our merchant base. Something that is unique about Adyen is that we only sign one-year, non-exclusive deals with our customers. As people are trying to dig out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, they need more flexibility and we don't want to saddle them with a 3-5 year exclusive agreement. We provide our customers with tremendous flexibility as well as superior technology.

We work with mid to large enterprise global merchants. Some of our current customers include Getty Images, KLM Airlines, Vodafone, and PopCap Games, among others. We work with a variety of different sectors. Our customers are looking to globalize and monetize their solution. We act as a guide.

We have payment solutions in place for Central and Western Europe, South America, parts of Asia, as well as North America. We can work with these companies in specific markets that they are looking to target. We steer them to the payment methods that have been, in our experience, the most relevant. When these companies offer another payment method other than credit card they will often see an uptick in the 20%-30% range. Outside of North America most regions are not credit-card centric.

You have a global footprint. Where are your offices located?

Our global headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Our U.S. headquarters are in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and our Asian operations are based in Singapore.

We are very excited about it. We just recently signed an agreement with PopCap Games. We are handling their e-commerce transactions. The company is one of the leading providers of casual video games, or what I often label the social gaming sector. Their most popular game is probably Bejeweled Blitz. It is incredibly popular. I think last time I checked, PopCap has had their games downloaded more than 1.5 billion times. This entire social gaming space is an extremely fast growing area.

I think this is where things are going. We are seeing this proliferation of people going to this next-generation type of medium where they look at something on an iPad or smartphone, then they go to YouTube to watch the video, maybe IM a friend about the content, and then they both end up playing a game together. I see this confluence of all of these different social mediums coming together. It is very exciting. I think this is a space that we are definitely in the middle of, and where we think we can help merchants monetize their offerings in the space.

One of the challenges that companies have in the online media sector is monetizing their businesses. How can a company like Adyen help grow a revenue stream and also provide advice as far as the monetization process is concerned.

What I have observed, especially coming out of the financial crisis over the last two years, is that a lot of companies are taking a hard look at the markets that they are serving today, and trying to assess what new markets they can go into inexpensively. E-Commerce is a perfect venue for that. There is not a huge investment with regard to getting up and running in e-commerce and that is something that we can help customers with. Through one connection with us we can give you access to over 50 unique payment methods in markets on 5 continents. That certainly is appealing in that it opens up a lot of new markets and subsequently, the potential for a lot of new customers. Also, if you offer alternative payment methods rather than just a credit card payment method, you are giving a broader group of customers the chance to consume your product.

Absolutely. It is taking place in Seattle. We are a sponsor of the event and will have a booth there. Casual Connect is a show which is bringing together a lot of the players and investors in this casual and social online medium. Companies like PopCap Games. I am biased, but I think that this is where a large part of the marketplace is heading. The online social medium is intersecting with the smartphone and iPad revolution and driving incredible growth in both areas.

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