FLIZpay, a next-generation mobile payments startup, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to disrupt the European merchant payment landscape. The round was led by Antler, with support from top angel investors including Johannes Schaback, Sebastian Seifert, Achim Bönsch, Andreas Veller, Manuel Sandhofer, and Philipp Kreibohm.

Co-founded by Konrad Holtkamp and Roberto Ammirata, FLIZpay is on a mission to make digital payments cheaper, faster, and fairer for merchants while ensuring that payment data remains sovereign within Europe.

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The Problem: Hidden Fees Are Quietly Bleeding Merchants

Traditional payment systems are burdened by layers of intermediaries -  card networks, acquirers, processors -  each taking a cut before the merchant even sees their revenue. These hidden transaction fees silently drain 1%–3% per sale, which can quickly balloon to tens of thousands in annual costs for small and mid-sized retailers.

FLIZpay’s model eliminates unnecessary middlemen, leveraging a leaner, direct payment pipeline that promises up to 90% cost reduction for merchants. Already, the company serves over 500 merchants and 50,000 users, signaling strong early adoption and a clear appetite for lower-cost alternatives.

Germany alone processes €800 billion in card and cash payments each year -  meaning even a small market share could translate into billions in processed volume.

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The Unseen Advantage: Owning the Margin Shift

While many fintechs chase scale through volume, FLIZpay is doing something more strategic: it’s owning the margin shift.

Most startups in fintech compete on UX, integrations, or feature convenience. But that battlefield is crowded -  and easily copied. FLIZpay, however, is fighting a deeper, more defensible war: it’s shifting who captures the margin. By directly aligning with merchants rather than banks or networks, it redefines value ownership inside the payment stack.

Here’s the real founder-level insight hiding in this move: margin relocation beats margin compression.

Instead of competing to reduce fees like every other payment startup, FLIZpay is redirecting them -  turning cost centers into loyalty engines. It’s a subtle but powerful distinction. Once your users feel like the system is built in their favor, retention compounds naturally.

That’s what too many fintech founders miss. Product-market fit isn’t just about usability or growth hacks -  it’s about aligning incentives so tightly that your user’s financial gain becomes your moat. When merchants save money every transaction, they become evangelists, not customers.

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The Team Behind the Mission

Founders Konrad Holtkamp and Roberto Ammirata launched FLIZpay in October 2023 after witnessing firsthand how traditional acquirers and processors erode small-business margins. Holtkamp, a serial fintech builder, has said their goal is simple: “To make every transaction in Europe transparent, low-cost, and locally controlled.”

With backing from global accelerators like Antler, FLIZpay is now positioned to scale its infrastructure, optimize real-time settlement features, and strengthen compliance under Europe’s evolving PSD3 framework.

The company’s angel network also provides strategic firepower -  including leaders from Zalando, Lieferando, and Klarna -  ensuring it can navigate both the retail and payments ecosystems with precision.

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Industry Context: The Payments Market Is Rewiring

The global digital payments market is projected to surpass $12 trillion by 2027 (Statista, 2024), driven by mobile wallets, instant transfers, and fintech infrastructure. Europe is at the heart of this shift, with the European Central Bank pushing open banking, data sovereignty, and interchange fee regulation.

Yet for merchants, this innovation hasn’t translated into relief. They’re still paying legacy rates for every tap and online checkout. This friction has created an opening for localized fintechs like FLIZpay, who combine low-cost operations with EU-based data storage -  an increasingly decisive factor for European businesses wary of US-based providers.

By localizing its stack, FLIZpay doesn’t just cut fees -  it builds trust. And in fintech, trust isn’t a feature; it’s the product.

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A Founder’s Lesson Hidden in the Model

If you zoom out, what FLIZpay is really demonstrating is that infrastructure is the new frontier for product-market fit. While the past decade was about building layers on top of financial systems (apps, wallets, dashboards), the next one will belong to startups rebuilding underneath them -  where fees, latency, and compliance live.

Founders often underestimate how powerful “boring” infrastructure can be. It’s not as viral as a shiny consumer app, but it captures the most durable economics. Every transaction that flows through your rails compounds your relevance.

That’s the unglamorous truth of fintech success: the closer you are to the flow of money, the harder you are to replace.

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What’s Next for FLIZpay

With this pre-seed capital, FLIZpay plans to:

• Expand across Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands
  
• Strengthen real-time settlement capabilities for merchants
  
• Grow partnerships with European banks and fintechs
  
• Invest in regulatory licensing and EU compliance infrastructure
  

The startup’s long-term ambition is to create a merchant-centric payment network that rivals incumbents like Stripe and Adyen -  but built entirely with European data sovereignty in mind.

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Why This Funding Round Matters

This raise signals more than a milestone for one startup -  it marks a broader shift toward merchant-aligned fintech. As open banking matures and interchange margins tighten, the companies that will thrive are those that return value to the ecosystem instead of extracting it.

For investors, this is a reminder that fintech innovation isn’t slowing -  it’s deepening. The battle is no longer about who builds the nicest dashboard; it’s about who redefines the economics beneath it.

FLIZpay’s pre-seed raise proves that even in a competitive space, a startup can carve a moat not by chasing growth, but by restructuring incentives in favor of the people who keep the system alive -  the merchants themselves.

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