March 9 (SeeNews) - French payment service provider iBanFirst said on Wednesday that it launched an office in Bulgaria to facilitate international payments for local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as part of its expansion in Southeastern Europe (SEE).
"The opening of the Bulgarian office will contribute to our European business objective of doubling the monthly volume of transactions of up to 4 billion euro ($4.4 billion) in 2022," the company founder and CEO Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier said in a press release.
The fintech company appointed Dean Todorov country manager of its Bulgarian branch. He will be responsible for iBanFirst’s local operations under the coordination of Johan Gabriels, regional director for SEE.
According to Gabriels, iBanFirst has chosen Bulgaria because it believes that the country's business potential is underestimated. The company expects that its operations in the SEE region will account for 25% of the total European revenue in three years' time, Gabriels added.
iBanFirst’s expansion in SEE follows a growth equity investment deal of 200 million euro with U.S. investment fund Marlin Equity Partners (MEP) to finance product development, international growth, and mergers and acquisitions, the payment service provider said. The agreement has made MEP the majority shareholder of iBanFirst while Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier became the company’s second-largest shareholder.
Last year, iBanFirst said it opened an office in Romania's Bucharest - its first in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, and announced plans to expand on the Bulgarian and Hungarian markets.
Established in 2013, iBanFirst offers international payment solutions via a cloud platform. The company has more than 250 employees and serves more than 4,000 customers throughout Europe.
($ = 0.911931 euro)