Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Adyen H2 2021 earnings call. My name is Ethan Tandowsky. I'll be your moderator today, and I'm joined by our CEO, Pieter van der Does, and our CFO, Ingo. We're excited to talk you through the financial performance from the second half of the year. To get started, like we've done in past earnings call, we'll start with a short movie which will take you through some of the developments we've seen in the industry and trends we've seen on our platform. Hope you enjoy it.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Adyen. The results for the past half year were strong, and the indicators of sustainable, profitable growth remain intact. We processed EUR 300 billion in volume in H2 2021, and EUR 516 billion for the full year. Net revenue for the second half was EUR 556 million, 64%, and EUR 1 billion, 63%, for the full year. As in previous periods, we saw merchants already on the platform contribute over 80% of volume growth and volume churn remains below 1%. The industry continues to grow, and we've seen an acceleration in the digitalization of economies around the world over the last year. For these results, we would like to highlight a few metrics prove to us that we're on the right track in executing our strategy.
The contribution of net revenue coming from regions outside of EMEA was above 40% for the first time in Adyen's history. We see this as a great sign for the continued geographical diversification of the business. Point of sale volumes are once again outpacing e-commerce volumes, growing 97% year-on-year for the period. Businesses are looking. This is true now more than ever in an increasing number of verticals. This acceleration of digitalization is not just anecdotal, it's happening everywhere. In APAC, the payment culture is more digital than ever, bringing an increasing amount of overlap regionally to what was historically the most fragmented payment market. In EMEA, the initial shock of the pandemic resulted in businesses prioritizing quick and dependable for.
In Latin America, the shift towards online commerce seems unstoppable, and we're seeing new payment methods pop up and quickly gaining share as they're able to democratize access to this new digital economy. In North America, Unified Commerce is more than ever top of mind for merchants across an increasing number of verticals. Delivery, curbside pickup, and contactless payments are becoming more transformational, and it's now a critical part of RFPs from businesses. On products, we're continuously improving our Adyen for Platforms offering an added Score, which employs network analysis and machine learning to target the multi-sided fraud that is specific to platforms. We also launched a new range of handheld Android point-of-sale devices, providing merchants with a flexible options. We're looking to ramp up hiring in 2022.
This is partially why we're announcing today the launch of two new tech hubs in Madrid and Chicago, locations where we'll build engineering and product teams. All in all, we look back on a strong set of results from the second half of 2021 and look forward to what the next year has to bring.
Great. Well, we clearly have a lot to talk about, so we'll dive next into a discussion with Pieter and Ingo, where we'll touch on some of the key points. Following that, we'll move to a Q&A session. Just as a reminder, you can already start to ask your questions using the Q&A functionality at the bottom of your screen. Please do include your full name and firm you represent. What are your...
Well, of course, I'm well impressed with EUR 1 billion of revenue, but also processed volume. It feels to me not so long ago that we said one day we'll do EUR 1 trillion. At the time, that was 20x. Right now, we're over 0.5 trillion. We're really getting there, so immensely proud of that. What I, of course, want to highlight is the difficult COVID times, and we haven't been able to see each other as much in the office as we like. Everybody went the extra mile. I'm really, really happy and humbled to work in such a team.
On the numbers, we said that we organically will build a global company, and now with more than 40% coming outside of the EMEA with that, especially in North America, growing 74% on net revenue year-over-year. I think that's amazing. If you look at how we do it, we build strong partnerships with our merchants. More than 80% of growth comes from existing relationships while we're adding new merchants at the same time that expand with us. It shows that they like our services. Of which I want to point out, that is the platforms. Platforms are increasingly important as a business model and also part of the market that we're really interested in and successful in.
It's complex because you have to keep in mind the needs of the market, of the platform, but also the needs of the sellers on the platform. You work on both ends of how we get to such a growth.
Great. Growing together with our merchants, further diversification together with them, all fantastic trends. Ingo, I'm curious to hear from you. Is there anything else that you'd like to highlight?
Yeah, I'd like to highlight our growth in point of sale. We doubled volumes over the past year, which is very impressive. At the same time, e-commerce growth was probably one of the best years in the history of our platform. From that perspective, we're looking at great performance. We're also of course happy to see that in the course of this pandemic, people returned in-store. That helps us also to execute Unified Commerce strategies with our merchants. Make ways come with the best customer journey.
I think it's a clear proof point for us that the Unified Commerce strategy is helping merchants to execute their payment strategy and yeah we're pleased to be their partners and that's why we're so happy with this growth in volumes.
Clear. Unified Commerce is a trend definitely here to stay. That's a nice natural transition into, of course, still we're about two years out from the start of the pandemic, and it's changed a lot of things in this world, also how merchants interact with their shoppers. Pieter, I'm very curious to hear from you. How has shopper behavior changed in the last half year?
Yeah. For merchants, it became really, really important to build a consistent brand to their shoppers over all channels. That's even more important because there is competition on service levels to shoppers. It becomes business critical to be able to do Unified Commerce. What we have seen during the pandemic is that as stores were closing other business models took over. Think about curbside pickup. We've seen the move from cash to cashless. We have the systems to help them with that. Also, as an effect of that, you see that merchants which were only on a single channel with us, so for example, point of sale, were very quick to add online to it.
All the trends which were in the industry have accelerated because of the pandemic, and those trends were exactly the trends that we build our products for.
Clearly see our merchants adapting. I'm curious as well how our team has adapted. Ingo, maybe you can expand on that.
Yeah. The team has clearly adapted to the new situation. Also over the past year, they've been extremely adapting to the situation and helping to continue to build a company, always in a combination, working from home or working from a local situation. That's been quite different in the different regions. If you look at our strategy there, we want to offer basically two options, work from home or work from the office, but always have that moment in the week where, if it's possible, given the local situation, to get back to the office. Because we strongly believe that that's a great place to work together and see each other, to talk to each other. That's also why we continue to invest in new buildings.
We're sitting here in the New Amsterdam office. We've also opened new locations in London, in New York. What was also said in the video, we're launching new hubs, engineering and product. That's all to basically continue to build out our team and have local presence close to where our customers are based. That's something that we're very proud of, that we continue to invest in those locations. Going forward, of course, I really look forward to see people in the office again. We think that best things. Yeah, that's what we continue to focus on.
Maybe as a last thing, also talking about being in the office or being virtual, we have also planned a new virtual event towards the end of March. The thirty-first of March, we're organizing a new Capital Markets Day, where we wanna talk about our arrival at a couple of milestones that we just presented, and we wanna talk about our strategy going forward in a virtual Capital Markets Day end of March.
Great. Well, thank you both. Let's now move to see what questions have come in. First question comes from Mo Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. Mo, you can unmute yourself. Please, go ahead with your question.
Great. Thank you, Ethan. Afternoon, Pieter and Ingo. Thank you for taking my question. I had two. First one for Pieter. Obviously there's a lot of narrative and debate around sort of always being fairly steadfast, that you see this as a Unified Commerce market over the long run. Can you talk a bit more about maybe through some merchant examples of how you're sort of capturing some of this channel shift, how easy it is for your merchants to also kind of using the single platform, you know, roll out in things like POS? I anecdotally myself in London see so clearly this is quite tangible and visible. So maybe talk about that and how this can offset any potential headwinds that may come on the e-com side. The second question was for Ingo.
Obviously, the take rate has several dynamics in there, but obviously as you grow your wallet share, customers are hitting kinda higher volume thresholds. Could you talk us through all the various moving parts around the take rate over the medium term, and related to that, you know, particularly mix effects? Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Sorry, Pieter, I just interrupted, but go ahead on the Unified Commerce question.
Yeah, I think that the foundation under our growth is expanding with our existing merchants. Why is Unified Commerce so important? If you look at total addressable market first, it's huge. This is about outperformance for Adyen to have its growth trajectory. Outperformance, I think it's a very good decision which we took. I think in 2013, we started building on point of sale. To have that in a single platform means that you have a single view on your shopper, and it makes all those adjustments really the same product by doing acquisitions. With what we can do, that means that you can do a return in store.
If theoretically you could do it without talking, you show the product you want to return, which you bought online, you dip the card and they can refund you on the card. If you have that in separate systems, exactly those journeys are then very, very difficult. This is about building products. Products, point of sale, we built seven or eight years ago, start building on this. That's also what we do today. We are today building products which will take up years probably before they become a large part of our volume. You see it in point of sale growing, I think 97%. But again, such a base we're growing from that in terms of share it now grows. There also is of course a huge potential still in those products.
I think that that's the answer to your question, how dependent are you on the volume of single merchants? For us it's way more important how successful are we in rolling out our strategy, and I think there are a lot of data points that we are successful in doing that.
Great. Thanks, Pieter. I think for you, Ingo, on take rate, I know it's, but what are some of the puts and takes that we see there?
Yeah. On take rate, I think there are a couple of things to highlight. Of course, first of all, the strategy has always been to grow with our merchants, and if a merchant brings more volume, the price per transaction goes down and that has a negative impact on take rate. There are some other factors as well. One of the factors is that we've seen over the past half year, average value has increased, and that has a negative impact on take rate as well. Because part of our fees is in cents instead of basis points. If we have less transactions with the same processed volume, the fees are lower and therefore take rate declines. That's another important effect that we have seen.
Other than that, say that we continue to manage the business on absolute margins. Making sure that we continue to grow our business with our merchants and increase the invoice over time. That's our main focus. That's how we manage. Therefore we are happy with current level of take rates.
Clear. We have Adam Wood of Morgan Stanley. Adam, please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Congratulations on very, very strong second half of the year. Could I also ask, too, the first one is just maybe a little bit of a follow-up around the e-commerce market. You know, Mo alluded to the fact that that does seem to have slowed down in the second half, and that slowdown looks to have continued into January. Could you maybe just talk a little bit? We know that the merchant penetration is much more important for you than baseline market growth. You know, if you separate that out on the platform, could you talk a little bit about what you've seen on whether as we've come into the start of this year, there's been any big changes to that that you've noticed?
Maybe secondly, just on the cost side of the equation, you flagged that you would have liked to have hired more in the second half of 2021. Do you see that as a banner 2022? Could you maybe just talk a little bit about how challenging attrition rates and hiring is now in the market, and whether that pace of hiring this year could have a noticeable impact on the EBITDA margins? Thank you.
So if I start-
Maybe to start, Ingo, on e-commerce. I think the way e-commerce is developing, do you have anything to add there? I know we'll get to you, Pieter, afterwards on the rate of hiring.
It's indeed hard to distinguish those trends on our platform because we keep growing with our merchants. 80% of our growth comes from existing merchants, so we're winning a lot of market share or share of wallet with our merchants. Therefore, the trend that e-commerce growth would slow down, what you maybe see or hear in the news, that will be the case for the next year. We continue to work with our merchants, making sure that we get more volume over time. That will be our main focus.
Pieter, maybe on the hiring side, how are we able to bring more people into the company and realize our growth ambitions?
Yeah. No, it's a competitive employment market to attract that quality. Would it have impact on the business? I don't think so because this is not an Adyen specific problem, but it's for the whole tech market. I think being able to get those excellent people on board in product, in commerce, in engineering. We're a group of employees that like working here, so it's something that we are very protective of. At the same time, we also expanded where we are with our engineering team. We added Madrid and Chicago there to be closer to where the merchants are, but also not to be just dependent on Amsterdam. That's how we look at
Got it. Thank you. Next up on the line is Sandeep Deshpande from JP Morgan. Sandeep, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for letting me on, and congratulations on great results. Clearly you've got really strong growth at this point, but clearly as a management team, you're planning for the next three to five years. Do you need to pivot to Unified Commerce, which are your biggest drivers of growth at this point? Or do you see that there are so many new engagements in these existing markets which will continue to drive this sort of growth for Adyen over the next two to four years or three to four years as such, really? My second question is, you've had new initiatives like issuing, and when will they start providing a report of-
Let's start with where we can expect our long-term growth to come from. After that, we can go to issuing.
I think it's important for us to stay ahead of the curve. I think we're very advanced in respect to the rest of the market, but that shouldn't mean that you are not looking very carefully on which initiatives you want to double down. Example of that, of course, are our platforms. You see that there's a shift in the business. You see that there's a shift to more global commerce. Yet at the same time there we are doing very well with our existing products. This is developing things now which will deliver only in the number of years. Tell how long that took. Maybe Ingo, you want to add on the second part of the question?
I think in general, like we've always been successful in following our merchants, and also understanding what they like to develop, and that's something that we continue to do so. If we see new opportunities for new products, platforms is a great example that Pieter just mentioned, we will invest in it. It's the same way how we work. There is really no limitation in growth there right now. The addressable market is huge, and we only have a relatively very small share of it. But of course, we need to keep listening to our merchants to see what's relevant and make sure that we develop it. That's maybe a nice bridge to, for instance, issuing. That's exactly why we built issuing for platforms, for issuing is limited.
I don't expect that it will have a significant impact on revenues this year, but we will certainly think about how we can make it more visible going forward. We would love to talk more about such a product, for instance, also on our Capital Markets Day, end of March to explain where we are on our journey, and also to make sure that we build indeed the right product.
Some of my questions have been answered, but maybe in terms of the hiring, can you maybe talk through, is there any particular emphasis on those two hubs? Just thinking now maybe on issuing, will there be some capacity? Then the second question is maybe on the stellar growth performance, can you break it down? What is the underlying growth? What do you get from, for example, license wins or acquiring license wins?
Maybe Pieter, on the hiring side, what will we focus on in those tech hubs?
Yeah, we made the decision there that we don't want to hire and mimic a coding factory. In the hubs, we will be working on specific products so that there's a certain that engineers can take a certain pride. Also, you see it's close to where our merchants are.
Discuss the anti-fraud score product that is profiled in the shareholder letter. What does multi-sided mean? 'Cause that's a word you use a lot in describing score for fraud. What kind of demand are you seeing for this service?
Proper fraud. In the platform space, there is another element to fraud is that you could also have seller fraud, people who claim to sell products, but they're actually not delivering. That means that you get to a total different level of complexity in your fraud product, where you also look at how to protect the marketplace from fraudulent sellers. Which is new area for us where we, of course, deploy machine learning and can help marketplaces to take a worry out of their hands.
This is really a fraud risk unique to the platform or marketplace model.
True.
Yeah. The multi-sided means basically buyer and seller. It's both sides. That's what it is.
than just on platforms, but then I understand Score correctly is focused on platforms as well. Thanks.
Thanks for the question, Jamie. Next up, we have Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Fred, go ahead.
Hey, can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yes.
Great. Hey, good afternoon. One question on my side on the terminal side. You've introduced Android's customers.
Yeah. Good question. Ingo, maybe you can tell us about Android and what we're seeing in the market.
Yeah, absolutely. We decided to launch an Android terminal because it's very easy to then also build your own application on it and get a smooth implementation on a single device for both cash register and the payment service. We see a lot of traction there. We also look at what's happening in the market. Indeed, new announcements by Apple is something that we closely follow. We've always been a partner with Apple on Apple Pay, and yeah, it's. We can't say anything about it right now, but of course, we follow it very closely.
Thanks. Next up is James Goodman of Barclays.
James, sorry.
Yeah, hi Ethan. Thanks. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just following up a little bit on the last question, but more on the online side and linking to the hiring as well. I mean, I appreciate all the comments about the intended increase in hiring, but some of the dotcoms of this world are, you know, growing exceptionally fast like yourselves, but also hiring very rapidly. Just wondering if you can comment a little bit on whether you're starting to bump more into those providers than you have done in the past. Because historically I've perceived it more that you've grown alongside other next gen providers, but you're reaching such a scale now where I wonder whether you're seeing more direct overlap.
Just 4% FX impact called out, I think a 6% year-on-year tailwind, definitely stronger than the headline euro USD change would suggest. I imagine a bit of a mismatch there in terms of costs within the gross and net revenue. Wondering if you could help us a little bit with more specifically how we should model out effects and thinking about that into 2022. Thank you.
Sure. Let's start, new age players, that James mentioned.
Yeah, I think that if you look at the competitive field, we are winning mostly business from the incumbents. We're working with the larger merchants, and that means that it's not so much of a fight between the new players, and I don't think the competition. There's always a lot of money in the market, and that means that a lot of companies get funded, and we notice, all of us notice that. That makes the market very competitive to hire. I don't think in competition for the services we see increased competition.
Got it. Ingo, on the FX tailwind that
The tailwind is mostly the result of changes between the euro and the dollar. There is a bit of a difference between indeed how we bill to merchants and how we get billed. Merchants are free to agree certain currencies with us, how they like to get billed. Of course, that's not always congruent with our costs or how we get our fees. There can be a bit of a mismatch why you see it. I think in general, of course, if you just in general look at FX developments, we don't see like huge swings other than the USD euro lag and sometimes the BRL for Brazil. We feel quite comfortable where we are.
Well, thanks for the questions, James. Next up we have Josh Levin from Autonomous. Josh, go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. You've highlighted a few times that a large share of your growth continues to come from existing clients. Can you give us a sense of how much of that growth is coming from your clients' own growth, meaning they're just growing very quickly their own businesses versus. Thank you.
Organic growth versus wallet share gains. Ingo, maybe you can expand on that.
Yeah. Well, certainly important part of the growth is coming from wallet share gains, because we continue to work with our merchants to grow their volumes over time. Of course, we grow organically, so we benefit from that. But we couldn't get to these growth numbers if we would not gain market share or wallet share with our existing merchants. It's also really part of our strategy. We've always had this land and expand strategy, where we start to work with a merchant and then with key how we operate, also how we've built up our commercial teams. We will continue to do that going forward.
Got it. Well, thanks. Next up, we have Timothy Chiodo from Credit Suisse. Timothy can't get onto the call right now, so I will step in and ask his question. I hope I do it eloquently, otherwise, Timothy, I apologize. Americas was once again an area of strength, and in the past you'd mentioned an increasing ability to win domestic volumes from U.S.-based merchants. Could you elaborate on this trend continuing and some of the U.S.-based share gains you are seeing? Maybe, Pieter, can you take that one?
Yeah. What you see is that the first part in the world where we had the full strength of the product was in Europe. The U.S. followed later with being able to process end to end under our own control. In the meantime, what with the way we redeveloped the product in Europe by being able to do that Unified Commerce, what we excel at, that we could bring that to the U.S. market in combination with having the product in the right place where you would expect the growth. Asia is much more fragmented. It doesn't surprise us that it takes longer to get to the same numbers because it's phased over time. Through our lens, very understandable.
Got it. The second question that he had was on, especially in the second half-
Yep.
how that differs by industry or if inflation had any impact. Just curious to hear what's driving that, if we expect it to persist or not.
Yeah. That has to do with portfolio mix. It has to do with more retail, a larger exposure of retail in our books, so that brings the-
Got it. Maybe Ingo, are we seeing inflation play a role there as well or not yet?
Yeah, I wouldn't say that that's currently has a big impact. Of course, inflation is going on. We're tracking as closely. But I wouldn't say that that's the main driver of the ATV increase right now. The main driver of the ATV increase is indeed the shift in volume mix coming now, for instance, the more online e-commerce type of transactions.
Clear. Okay, thanks. Next up is Nooshin Nejati from Deutsche Bank. Nooshin, please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for letting me on. I had a couple of questions as well, just, again, a follow-up on e-commerce and your growth decomposition. Can you tell us how much of your growth was. On your OpEx, I want to know, like, what do you expect your OpEx to evolve in 2022? Is there soon any employee compensation due, like what we see in H1 2020? I'm trying to understand if you are reaching your midterm guidance on margins anytime soon. When it comes to the strategy, there again, going forward, is there any vertical or geography that you're focusing on? Thank you so much.
Got it. Thanks, Nooshin. Maybe Ingo, to start on the first two. Pure e-com growth, how has that been developing? Follow that by. Sorry, Nooshin, you had three. I tried to write them down. Let's start with the
Yeah. The e-com volume growth over 2021 was close to 70%, so lower than point of sale. It's a growth we're really pleased with, of course, given the other signals that you get from the market. If you look at for next year, we don't. I think part of the question is, like, do we need that type of volume? That's something that we don't track right now because we want to be transparent on where point of sale volume comes from. If you look at the platform, 14% is point of sale volume. That means then that 86% of our transactions is originated on the web or on the mobile. But like, what is purely the type of merchants that only have...
We do not disclose.
Got it. Thanks. The second question, I've got it now, was how we expect our operating expenses to develop in the next year or so.
Yeah. Yeah. If you look at operating expenses, we don't specifically guide on operating expenses. That's why we have given the long-term EBITDA guidance. Long term, we wanna grow to 50%. If you look at the things that we indicated in this shareholder letter, is that we want to ramp up hiring, and we expect that marketing spend will go up. At the same time, we don't want to specifically guide on EBITDA margin for 2022. Don't expect, like, big surprises, because then we will tell you. I think we've been quite consistent. We surely want to make sure that we continue to invest in the business for the long term. That's why it is important to hire people to invest in marketing.
That potentially could have a bit of impact on EBITDA margin compared to where we landed it for the full year 2021. It's not something that we actively manage for investments.
Thanks, Ingo. The last question, maybe for you, Pieter, was on the structural share gains. How do we look to gain market share? Is that through specific verticals or regions, geographies? How do we look at that, going forward?
Yeah, that's a great question. If you look at how we do it's by working together with our merchants. If you look at how we go with an existing merchant going into that region, it's in close collaboration with our merchants. Also, if you look at industries, for example, hospitality, then we work together with those merchants, what's needed, contactless check-in, contactless checkout, stuff like that. Fully, having fully the physical, working together. It's both. It is you move through the regions with your merchants. Usually we start with existing merchants expanding to the next region. If you look at products, we are working together with merchants in a certain vertical to further expand with those products. A new product in a new market is always tricky.
You do the new product with the market, or you deepen the product with an existing merchant, so that you get better at that vertical.
Clear. Follow our merchants, do it step by step. Thanks for the answers. Thanks for the questions, Nooshin. Next up is David Togut of Evercore ISI. David, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Please discuss your growth strategy, both in Europe under open banking, and in the U.S., where account-to-account payments are growing through innovation, instead of through regulatory changes, as they are in Europe. My follow-up is just an update on your strategy to expand into Brazilian payments.
Let's start with account-to-account payments. Ingo, maybe you want to take that one.
Yeah, sure. It's how we see it's just one of those variations in payment methods. We absolutely want to make sure it's available to our merchants where it's relevant. That's also why we, for instance, invested in where open banking is really relevant, like in U.K. There are other account-to-account payment methods already active in Europe, iDEAL, and you have Sofort in Germany. We always wanna make sure that, also depending on the vertical, we bring the right mix of payment methods. Therefore, if new initiatives occur, we will make sure that we implement them when relevant. I think the same goes for Brazil. If you look at Brazil, it's a market. A new payment method was introduced. This is Pix.
The absorption rate of Pix is very high. We immediately implemented it. I think that's exactly also what our customers expect from us, that if new payment methods are introduced, that we assess whether they are really relevant, and if they are relevant, that they get access through it. That's always been our strategy, and we will continue to do so. In general, I would say that all that complexity that is brought to the market is good for a company like ourselves, because we are solely focused on helping merchants. We're not on the consumer side. We're helping merchants to accept payments. If new complexity is introduced, we help to be for our merchants.
Great. Thanks for the answer, Ingo. Next up is Sanjay Sakhrani from KBW. Sanjay, go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. I guess when we think about excess cash, you know, obviously been a strength for you guys in terms of has there been any shift in the thought process of utilizing some of that cash for capital management purposes or acquisition?
Ingo?
So far, it has really helped us to keep the speed. It helps in talking to large merchants. It helps to talk to regulators to convince them that we're. I think that's also being confirmed by our now public rating of S&P, which is A-. We find it very important that we have this stamp of stability, being a stable company that is very financially healthy. Of course, if there are good investment opportunities, we will always look into new markets. That's why we're expanding the team. We still believe in an organic growth strategy. The likelihood that we will start into or go into M&A is very low.
Clear. No real change there then from the way we've discussed in the past?
No real change. That's right. Yeah.
Got it. Thanks. Antonin Baudry from HSBC. Antonin, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Thank you very much and good afternoon. My question is about North America and the U.S. in particular. Would it be possible to have an update on the new product launch in the U.S. related to your new banking license on when you expect to see a piece related specifically to this banking license? Thank you.
Ingo, I think you can talk us through the license in the U.S.
Yeah, absolutely. I think the banking license in the U.S. is very similar to why we applied for the license in Europe to improve our service levels. Being less dependent upon third-party banks where we settle through by having that settle ourselves to merchants, and that improves the service level to our merchants. Of course, it also gives some opportunities to do like short-term lending, et cetera, which we already introduced in some products. We don't expect to have any big launches because we have been improving the service level of our current offering in the U.S. Which is also very relevant, for instance, for platform merchants, because their payout is like a key thing in the offering.
Like, having a very reliable payout service is key to being successful as a platform provider, because you need to pay out to millions of sellers on a daily basis. That's one of the examples why it is so relevant to not be dependent upon third parties.
Got it. From a revenue perspective, would you expect much change?
No, not really. Of course, payout product is a paid product, so that's where we already get paid for. This is more like a optimization improvement. No real margin impact. It's also not why we started it.
Got it. Clear. It looks like we're almost running out of time, so let's take one last question. Comes from the line of Gregor [Groman] from AlphaValue. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question. I think you've done quite an amazing job maintaining your level even though you wanted to hire more this half year. With your point-of-sale exposure increasing drastically in the launch of Android point-of-sale terminals, could you please guide on the impact this might have on your workforce? Like, what is the marginal costs in terms of workforce for rolling out point-of-sale products from the existing merchants? And are these the same engineers rollout who were already assisting the same clients? And then just on the regional breakdown of your point-of-sale growth, is this sort of the same as, you know, the whole group level?
Ingo, I think best on the Android and how that affects the number of people that need to work on it, and also how point of sale looks across the globe.
The way we've built it over the years, Pieter already said it's a long-term investment. We started with it like years ago. It's always been to build it differently than the traditional players. Like the traditional point of sale model is that you have a service engineer that goes to a store and install a terminal, and it's all kind of configurations that need to be made. We configure terminals remotely, so this whole field engineering thing is not part of our business model. We just send the terminal to a store. If it's connected to internet, it works. That of course brings down the total cost of ownership significantly. Ramping up point of sale does not mean that our FTEs will grow very much with this model.
If you have, for instance, like large rollout projects with our customers, that is typically done also by a third party to help the merchant to make sure it's installed in stores very quickly. We have done those rollout, big rollout plans also in the past very, very quickly. I think it's not really a limitation, and that's also why we continue to invest in point of sale because it's just built it.
Got it. How do we look at point of sale volumes around the world? Is that well-aligned with the way our net revenues are distributed?
Yeah, it depends a bit on when we started it. I think it's very similar, like how you typically build out a new product. Of course, point of sale started off in Europe. That's why you still see most of the revenues. Then brought it to in Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong. There are many other markets where point of sale is introduced. I think the best proxy is probably indeed how net revenue is distributed. There can be some lagging effect because point of sale was introduced later than e-commerce, of course.
Yeah. That follows up on Pieter's point of it makes a lot of sense, and it's a good place to close off. Pieter and Ingo, thank you very much for the time, for talking us through second half results. Thank you all for watching. We hope to see you at the Virtual Capital Markets Day on March thirty-first. For now, goodbye from Amsterdam. Take care.