Thousands of brands around the world have chosen Recurly as their subscription management and billing platform. Our high-growth model has helped companies eliminate the friction of legacy solutions, optimize the customer experience, minimize operating costs, and scale sustainably. 

As we continue to improve and expand our offerings, we’re excited to announce the expansion of our European presence, led by our new general manager, Oscar Wall. Wall is responsible for expanding our European team, who will power customer support and growth opportunities in-region. Additionally, we are releasing new capabilities catered to the European market.

“The global subscription market is expected to double by 2025 and Europe is poised for explosive growth,” said Dan Burkhart, CEO and Co-founder of Recurly. “Year-over-year, Recurly has experienced 34% growth and supports over 300 European companies today. It is an exciting time for our European partners to grow and drive customer loyalty through our subscription payment capabilities and enhancements.” 

To learn more about the new features launching in Europe, we sat down with Jonas Flodh, Chief Product Officer at Recurly.

What are you and the Recurly team doing to ensure success in Europe? 

Flodh: I think the most important piece is establishing a team based in Europe that can support our customers and prospective customers and offer Recurly knowledge and advice in their time zone and geography. We're going to be a present partner to our merchants. 

Secondly, I think the Recurly core platform is really strong, and all the benefits of the platform really apply in Europe–the way you can set up different types of plans and integrate them and report on them and everything around revenue recovery. The core difference is that, in Europe, there are new payment methods. People are used to paying with different kinds of payment methods, and we’re going to support that so our merchants can provide the right options for their customers to pay. 

And then there are some other practices that are completely natural for EU customers, including the tax-inclusive pricing. European end users expect this, and now we can support that. We’ll also integrate with business partners and important business systems that are big in Europe to really make sure that all the strength of the Recurly platform is combined with all the things you need to have locally to be strong.

How will the new European data center impact EU customers?

Flodh: What we're doing is providing our customers with the option to host their account data in Europe instead. With all their account data with Recurly in Europe, they will have better control of where it is and so on. That control aspect is, I think, the important part. 

For most people, it's just like a checkbox. Like, “Okay, I can work with this merchant. They are European. They can offer me that.” Rather than like–it's not a big differentiator–but being disqualified if you don't offer it. So it's just the sense of control and knowing where your data's at.

Can you talk about the new features for Europe? 

Flodh: With tax-inclusive pricing, I think it's fairly straightforward. It's an expectation, and it's important that we understand it's for end consumers. This is just the starting point–we're going to continue to expand as we go deeper into the region.

SEPA, iDEAL, and SOFORT are the first new localized payment methods we’re adding. We already have some support for payment methods, like BACS or BECS payment. We're just adding direct debit methods and will continue to add more. ADYEN is one of the biggest gateways in Europe and the most important, so that's where we're starting.

Another big thing is the local currency that is now in Europe. Now, you can sign up with Recurly and pay us in your currency instead of having to pay in some foreign currency, so it's really a convenience thing. It's also a way to show that we're serious about the region, in a sense. 

For example, if I'm based in Europe, I have my revenue in euros, so I want to pay my partners in euros. So we’re adapting our offer to the local markets. On the one hand, we're adapting the Recurly offers to fit the European market. On the other hand, what we're doing is evolving the platform so that our merchant offers are better in the European market. The data center and the local currencies are all about Recurly having a better offer for our merchants.

Will there be any benefits/considerations for global subscriptions?

Flodh: I think one aspect of it is all the new payment methods and tax-inclusive pricing and so on will help global expansion for U.S. and Asian companies wanting to go into Europe. The other aspect is that Recurly is a truly global platform with great support for North America and South America, so now European merchants who sign up can do better business in their home market and also expand globally with Recurly into geographies where we are really strong.

For background, a lot of the European merchants we have on the platform right now came to Recurly because we are really strong in the U.S., Latin America, etc., and they have a global business. But their global business might be more important. Obviously, all of those benefits that allow them to scale globally with Recurly still exist, but now we better cater to European markets. 

What are you most excited about for this expansion?

Flodh: I'm very excited that we can serve our existing customers and new prospects in a completely different way now that we have people on the ground in this market. I'm excited, through those interactions and the people we now have in Europe, to learn much more and keep evolving our offers in Europe. I believe that the European market is going to be a very important part of Recurly's business going forward. It's going to be one of the core pillars of what we're doing, so I think a lot of the growth and opportunities for Recurly are going to come from Europe and I’m excited for that.

Learn more about Recurly’s European expansion.