She sat down in the COVID lockdown and started coding — now she’s taking on Bolt | TechCrunch

Sitting in Athens during the first COVID-19 lockdown, entrepreneur Rania Lamprou watched as online e-commerce exploded because of social distancing. But merchants still struggled with low conversion rates because their checkout processes were complicated, and they had to integrate multiple providers for payments, shipping, and loyalty programs. “I knew there had to be a better way to reduce friction for both merchants and customers,” she told TechCrunch. Why not turn the checkout process into a “Checkout-as-a-Service” platform that streamlined it for both merchants and shoppers? She started coding in Python. 

But, she wasn’t wasn’t alone. Tech giants Shop Pay and Bolt were in the same space, but were focusing on the U.S. market, less so Europe. The former had started back in 2014 and has now raised a total of $982.1 million. So what was Lamprou going to do with her tiny startup, which she’d named Simpler?

She brought on two co-founders she’d known from university, Alex Kyriakopoulos and Spyros Mandekis, started building the team, and they raised their first $1 million pre-seed round. 

“Yes, Bolt is a big, massive company, yes. But they are focused on the U.S., mostly with handling fraud problems, like chargebacks which is a very big problem in the U.S., but it’s not so much in Europe,” she told TechCrunch over a call. 

In Europe, she said, there are different issues: “We have to localize and add all these different solutions, different providers. Every country has different needs, customer preferences, different different payment providers, loyalty coupons, etc.”

That’s important because European e-commerce experienced a boost with a 66% sales increase from 2019 to 2021. Despite a temporary decline, the market is expected to keep growing, potentially reaching $955 billion by 2028. 

The solution turned out to be elegant.

On Simpler, merchants can fully outsource payments, shipping, and loyalty programs into one system, boosting conversions and reducing complexity. For shoppers, it means a one-click buying experience across multiple stores and channels, making shopping literally simpler.

Simpler is a low/no-code solution that can be integrated quickly, while shoppers get a one-click buying convenience, but across different merchants and channels. 

Now Simpler has over 250 merchants, more than half a million shoppers registered, and expects to 10x its revenue by end of 2025, said Lamprou. It’s also raised a €9 million / $10 million in a late-seed / pre-Series A, doubling down on the U.K., Italy, and Spain. Participating in the round were VentureFriends, MMC Ventures, and Lamda Development.

“We’re seeing strong demand from both SMEs and enterprise-level businesses as we expand across Europe,” she said.

While Shop Pay is exclusive to Shopify, Simpler is designed for all platforms. And, unlike Bolt, which focuses heavily on the U.S. market, Simpler is targeting the U.K. and Europe, tailoring its approach to the unique needs of these markets.

“We’ve built a robust end-to-end solution with three orders of magnitude less funding than Bolt,” she added, with a hint of a smile.