Unified commerce and European payments are under pressure as merchants juggle fragmented vendors, local debit schemes, and country-by-country compliance. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Niv Liran, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Unzer, to break down how one platform serves over 85,000 merchants across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark.

Niv explains how Unzer consolidated 13 acquired companies into a single system using a one-application-per-purpose rule, why local language sales and compliance expertise outperform global common-denominator approaches, and how open banking and the European Payments Initiative are creating new payment rails. The conversation gets specific on merchant migration tactics, daily workflow savings from eliminating multi-vendor reconciliation, and where AI-powered tools fit for small businesses within the next three to five years.

FIND OUT MORE

1️⃣ Gate your best features to the new platform so merchants have a reason to migrate without being forced.

2️⃣ Ask prospects to walk through their daily actions before pitching; let the pain sell the solution.

3️⃣ Set a one-app-per-purpose rule before consolidation starts to prevent political gridlock across acquired teams.

4️⃣ Test every partnership against two filters: does it help the merchant, and will consumers actually adopt it.

5️⃣ Connect directly to local accounting software in each market; it locks in retention and kills reconciliation overhead.

Guest

Niv Liran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nivliran

Unzer: https://www.unzer.com

Fintech Confidential

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

Supporters of Fintech Confidential

Under.io: Streamlines application and underwriting by digitizing PDFs for e-signature. under.io/FTC

Skyflow: A zero-trust data privacy vault delivered as an API covering PCI, CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2, and beyond. skyflowsecure.com

DFNS: Wallets as a service, API first, multi-chain, secured with MPC across 50+ blockchains. fintechconfidential.com/dfns

Hawk AI: Real-time payment screening, AML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating. gethawk.com

About the Guest

Niv Liran is Chief Product and Technology Officer at Unzer. He entered fintech at Groupon in Berlin solving chargebacks on billions in monthly volume, then held leadership roles at Rocket Internet and AUTO1 Group, where he scaled the tech department from 5 to over 350 employees. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and an MBA from INSEAD.

About Unzer

Unzer is a payments and commerce platform serving more than 85,000 merchants across Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Luxembourg with unified online, in-store, and back-office solutions through its UnzerOne platform.

About the Host

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential. Produced by DD3 Media, Fintech Confidential brings you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid.

Chapters

00:00 Episode Highlights

01:02 Welcome to Fintech Confidential

01:10 DFNS: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)

02:32 Meet Niv Inbar

05:08 Why Unified Commerce Is Hard

07:02 Falling Into Payments

09:46 Unser vs Stripe Adyen

11:30 Localizing Across Europe

12:44 One Platform Consolidation

15:12 Merchant Migration Playbook

17:43 Merchant Day to Day Example

20:21 Skyflow - Your Privacy API (sponsor)

21:18 Taming Local Debit Schemes

23:29 Selling ROI and Reducing Risk

26:29 Partnerships Open Banking EPI

29:20 EPI and Digital Wallet Future

31:06 Market Consolidation Ahead

32:27 Crystal Ball Unified Commerce

35:26 AI Agents for Small Business

37:32 One Sentence Founder Advice

39:11 Wrap Up Key Takeaways

41:03 Hawk AI - Realtime Fraud Monitoring (sponsor)

41:47 Disclaimer