Mollie Appoints New Chair and Board Member

Mollie, one of the fastest-growing payment service providers in Europe, has appointed Eli Leenaars, Vice-Chairman of Global Wealth Management at UBS as its new chairman and Muz Ashraf, Principal at TCV as a new member of its supervisory board. Leenaars will step down from his UBS role on 31 May 2021.

In late 2020, Mollie raised a 90 million Euro Series B round, valuing the company as a unicorn. The round was led by TCV, which also invests in Airbnb, Revolut and WorldRemit. So far in 2021 Mollie, with the vision to be the most loved payments service provider in Europe, has expanded into the UK and appointed Shane Happach as CEO.

Leenaars was on the board of ING Bank for more than a decade prior to joining UBS in 2015 and has also been a member of the board at Capital One since 2019. Ashraf has been with TCV for more than five years, overseeing investments in companies such as Klarna, Mambu and Spryker.

“I am very excited to be supporting the future development of Mollie,” comments Leenaars. “Founded by Adriaan Mol and with an uncompromising focus on driving innovation in online payments, Mollie enables merchants to grow faster and offers consumers seamless check-out experiences. This has been recognized by smart investors like TCV, world-class talent like Shane Happach and more than 110,000 merchants. I am proud to be on this team.”

“Mollie’s supervisory board includes some incredible fintech talent, and that’s critical as we scale across Europe,” says Shane Happach, CEO, Mollie. “In Eli, we have a truly accomplished board member who has overseen incredible growth at some notable companies. Muz brings an astounding fintech pedigree, which will serve Mollie well as we evolve our product offering. We’re building a stellar leadership team which will not only support Mollie’s growth, but the growth of our 110,000+ merchant customers.”

Leenaars and Ashraf join Miriam van Dongen (Vice Chair), Koen Köppen (CTO, Klarna) and Teun van Rappard (Partner, Imker Capital Partners) on Mollie’s supervisory board.