As the tech community gears up for the How to Web conference in Bucharest, the complexities of scaling across, and beyond, Central and Eastern Europe remain a central theme. For those that start in the region, expansion to the neighbouring markets is one of the first, and sometimes the hardest challenges.
For fintech especially: CEE region is a patchwork of currencies, languages, and regulations. It’s a landscape that often deters global giants, but for Stoil Vasilev, CEO and co-founder of Paypercut, this fragmentation isn’t something to fix per se but something to navigate. In fact, their business model is built upon helping merchants steer through different markets’ requirements.
Drawing on nearly a decade of running M&A and strategic growth at SumUp, Vasilev is now building the payment rails for a region he believes has been systematically overlooked. We had a conversation ahead of his appearance at How to Web, where he will talk in more details about scaling financial tools across borders without getting swallowed by regulatory drag. Continuing on that, we discuss how Paypercut is turning this friction into a growth engine by tackling the localised nuances that behemoths won’t touch.
Lenka Vranová
“The rest of the world”
Vasilev argues that the sheer diversity of the region creates a barrier that few are willing to properly invest in overcoming. “When it comes to Central and Eastern Europe, especially when it comes to the Balkans… it is considered the rest of the world. And if something is the rest of the world, that means very little support, very little attention.” Vasilev explains.
He points to the simple but profound challenge of language and market size. An American company expanding to the UK can operate in the same language. In CEE, expansion means navigating a dozen countries with at least ten different languages and several markets with populations of only one or two million people. This complexity, combined with unique local payment methods and financial systems, means that global players like Stripe, Block, and Checkout are present but rarely commit to the deep localisation needed to truly serve the market.
A vacuum that Vasilev and his team designed Paypercut to fill.
'We were hungry for more success'
Paypercut’s strategy was never about a single product. Vasilev is clear that the days of a fintech succeeding with a single offering, as was possible in 2015, are long gone. The company’s evolution from a “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) aggregator to a full-stack payments platform was, he stresses, intentional from day one.
The journey began by identifying a core mismatch in the CEE credit market: subprime customers seeking credit were being assessed by prime lenders with low-risk tolerance. Paypercut’s solution was to build a credit aggregator, allowing multiple providers to bid for a customer, increasing approval chances and lowering costs. But this was just the first step.
“For us, from the very beginning, it was very clear if we want to win against the biggest players in the world, we have to have multiple products,” Vasilev notes. They started with BNPL, they succedded, and then they decided they were hungry for more… Today, Paypercut combines “the card payment experience offered by Stripe, the credit elements of Klarna, and the integration of alternative local payment methods”, creating a unified platform that addresses the full spectrum of a merchant’s needs, explains Vasilev creatively.
Lessons from a fintech behemoth
Vasilev’s tenure at SumUp, a fintech that grew to 3000 employees, provided some hard-won lessons he now applies at Paypercut.
First is a cautious approach to mergers and acquisitions. Drawing from his experience overseeing M&A and strategic growth, he recalls that even with well-intentioned strategies, not every deal at SumUp yielded the desired results; in fact, he observed how poorly integrated acquisitions can easily clog product development pipelines and drain vital resources.
Consequently, Stoil shares Paypercut is open to consider inorganic growth only when a unique opportunity arises that perfectly aligns with their goals.
Beyond the strategic intricacies of M&A, Vasilev’s second major takeaway from his time at SumUp centers on the immense, often underestimated challenge of people management. He is open about his personal history with leadership, admitting that at one point, he wished to never manage a team again, describing the emotional and operational toll of human resource management as “the hardest thing” a founder faces.
Today, AI is changing that equation for him. By automating repetitive and often mind-numbing tasks like customer support, he can build a leaner, more focused organisation. For Vasilev, the goal is to liberate his team from the drudgery of manual processes, allowing human talent to focus exclusively on high-level problem solving and innovation.
“If you can leverage the human strengths to actually grow your business, apply creativity into the business, and then rewire all the repetitive activities in a way that is not going to tire the people themselves, then this is something that I’m going to embrace with my both hands."
Of course, if this helps to build a leaner, more agile, and more focused organization that avoids the bloat of traditional fintech giants — even better, he points.
A regional focus with a pan-European reach
While Paypercut’s heart is in CEE, its operational reach is pan-European. The company is live across the entire European Economic Area and has recently begun onboarding clients in the UK.
"For us, expansion is purely opportunistic. Because we have a lot of inbound customers coming from France, from Spain, from UK... we thought, OK, if we have to offer a service to these customers without really losing our focus, let's do it."
Within its core region, Vasilev names Greece as his favourite market. Though saturated, its maturity presents a welcome challenge, forcing Paypercut to prove it can offer a superior service. The company is also actively working on expanding into Turkey and the Western Balkans.
With around 300 customers and a large queue in the sales funnel, the focus is now on conversion and product enhancement. Upcoming features include marketplace tools like split payments, the ability for merchants to hold and send cash directly, and an ambitious move to integrate stablecoins. Vasilev believes the future is not about fiat or crypto, but about offering all currencies in one place.
“I really hope that by the end of this year, we’re going to have a lot broader product offering that is going to include features that are unique and are not offered in our region,” he concludes.
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