Montonio Review

Montonio is an Estonian checkout company, founded in Tallinn in 2018, that sells online payments and shipping to small and mid-sized ecommerce stores in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland. It began with open-banking bank payments, where the shopper picks their bank in the checkout and pays straight from their account. It now also bundles card and wallet payments, Inbank-funded pay later and financing, payment links and a multi-carrier shipping module. Its payment services run under a Bank of Lithuania payment institution licence held by Montonio Finance UAB. As of October 2026, Baltic merchants pay a monthly plan fee of €11.99, €14.99 or €39.99 before VAT. On top of that, a bank payment costs €0.05 to €0.20 and an EU consumer card costs 1.29% + €0.20 or 1.49% + €0.25, depending on the plan. In November 2025 Montonio began moving card processing from Stripe to Adyen; under Adyen, daily card payouts arrive two business days after the sale. Montonio says it serves more than 8,000 merchants with a team of about 65, and it is backed by Index Ventures. The price list is unusually complete and the bank-payment rates are low. On the other hand, the plans make card acceptance compulsory below the €39.99 tier, the general merchant terms are not published, and every card dispute costs €20, which Montonio's help centre now says is not refunded even if you win.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Montonio’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Montonio is

Montonio is a checkout and payments company for online stores in the Baltics, Poland and Finland. It was founded in Tallinn in 2018. Press coverage of its 2022 funding round names Markus Lember and Kristofer Turmen as founders, while the round's press release lists six co-founders: Karel Nappus, Kristofer Turmen, Markus Lember, Henrik Rank, Karl Kristjan Kalluste and Rasmus Õisma. Its Estonian company, Montonio Finance OÜ, was registered in Tallinn on 3 September 2018. It started with open-banking bank payments, where the shopper picks their bank in the store's checkout and approves the payment in their banking app. It has since added card and wallet payments, pay later and financing with Inbank, payment links, a multi-carrier shipping module, revenue-based financing through a partner, and Ladu, a set of operations tools for WooCommerce stores that starts at €29 a month.

By its own figures Montonio serves more than 8,000 merchants across the Baltics and Poland, with a team of about 65, as of October 2026. Its about page puts total funding at €18 million, including an €11 million Series A led by Index Ventures in April 2022, and lists Superangel among its backers. The lender Claret Capital Partners announced an investment in April 2025. Markus Lember was chief executive until August 2024, when Montonio appointed Johan Nord, formerly of the open-banking firm Trustly, as CEO.

How it works and who holds the account

Montonio's regulated payment services are provided by Montonio Finance UAB, a Lithuanian company with payment institution licence LB002007 from the Bank of Lithuania. According to the central bank's register, the licence has been valid since 5 November 2020 for payment initiation and account information services. Since 9 February 2023 it has also covered executing payment transactions, acquiring, and money remittance. Montonio presented that extension as letting it hold clients' funds.

For bank payments, you contract with Montonio directly. On the basic service the money moves from the shopper's account straight to yours, and Montonio sends you its fee on a monthly invoice. If you switch on refundable bank payments, shoppers pay into a Montonio account instead. Montonio pays your balance out on a schedule and lets you refund shoppers from it. Its terms say it safeguards that balance separately from its own funds.

Card payments work differently. The card terms we could read (a Stripe-era version) said Stripe processed and settled card funds, and each merchant also signed Stripe's connected-account agreement. From November 2025 Montonio began moving merchants to Adyen. Under Adyen, Montonio says merchants no longer go through separate verification with an outside processor, payouts arrive from Montonio rather than Stripe, and card fees come off the payout. We classify Montonio as a bank payment provider. Its licensed core product, the one the company was built on and still prices most cheaply, is open-banking bank payments, contracted and paid out by Montonio itself. Under Adyen it also onboards card merchants and pays out card funds itself, which works much like a payment facilitator, so expect the card side to carry the usual facilitator risk of holds on an account that is Montonio's rather than yours.

Pricing in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Montonio publishes one price list for the three Baltic states. All fees are shown excluding VAT, and VAT is added where it applies. As of October 2026 there are three self-serve plans and a custom tier:

• Starter, €11.99 a month: EU consumer cards 1.49% + €0.25, bank payments €0.20, refundable bank payments €0.20, Pay Later 2.90%.
• Core, €14.99 a month: EU consumer cards 1.29% + €0.20, bank payments €0.05, refundable bank payments €0.15, Pay Later 2.49%, phone support and faster email replies.
• Core Flex, €39.99 a month: the same transaction prices as Core, plus free direct carrier contracts and the option to disable cards and wallets.
• Custom: volume-based pricing, a dedicated account manager, multi-IBAN payouts and custom integrations, quoted by sales.

Other card types cost more on every plan: 2.39% + €0.20 for EU business cards, 2.99% + €0.20 for non-EU consumer cards, 3.60% + €0.20 for non-EU business cards and 2.50% + €0.20 for UK cards. Apple Pay and Google Pay are charged at the underlying card's rate. Refunds are free. Each card dispute costs €20, and reactivating a suspended service costs €5. Payment links cost €10 a month per store, and optional chargeback and fraud insurance is priced from 1%, depending on the industry. Financing through Inbank costs the merchant nothing. The subscription is charged once per business, not per store, and starts only after your account passes Montonio's checks.

Whichever plan you choose, card and wallet payments are switched on in Starter and Core. A store that wants to steer shoppers to cheaper bank payments, or avoid card disputes altogether, has to pay for Core Flex. For a store on Core taking mostly bank payments, the €0.05 fee is low. On a €50 order it works out to 0.1%, against 1.69% for an EU consumer card on the same plan.

Poland, Finland and Shopify

Poland, Finland and Shopify have their own price lists. Montonio's Polish page, aimed at businesses registered in Poland, quotes 0.93% + PLN 0.10 per transaction for BLIK, bank payments and EU consumer cards for new merchants. Accounts registered before 9 February 2026 keep 0.79% + PLN 0.10. The Finnish page names Minimum, Growth and Ultra plans at €11.99, €39.99 and €84.99 a month, but its per-transaction figures did not load when we checked, so we do not quote them. Baltic Shopify merchants pay €14.99 a month with bank payments at 0.79% + €0.10 and EU consumer cards at 0.99% + €0.15, before VAT; Polish Shopify merchants have a separate PLN list with no monthly fee. Shopify charges its own third-party payment fees on top. These Polish and Shopify rates are percentage-based, unlike the flat Baltic bank-payment fee, so they are not directly comparable with the plan prices above. Check the page for your country before you compare.

VAT and invoicing

Montonio bills monthly and accepts payment by bank transfer. Invoices come from more than one company: bank-payment, card and subscription fees from the Lithuanian entity, pay later and shipping fees from the Estonian one. Its help centre says bank-payment and subscription fees carry VAT (or reverse charge for VAT-registered businesses in other EU states), while card, BLIK and refund fees and the pay later fees are VAT exempt. Since the Adyen move, card fees are deducted from card payouts before they reach you and appear on the invoice as already deducted. Other fees, including bank payments, subscription and shipping, are still paid against the monthly invoice.

Payouts and refunds

Plain bank payments settle to your own account instantly or in the next SEPA clearing cycle. With refundable bank payments, Montonio pays out the previous day's payments within one working day by default; weekly payouts arrive on Mondays and monthly payouts on the first business day of the month. Merchants who joined before 28 March 2024 may still have a three-working-day buffer on daily payouts, which support can remove. Card payouts under Adyen are daily at T+2 business days, or weekly on Mondays, or monthly. Montonio says this replaced 3+ business days on Stripe's daily schedule. Card refunds can be issued at any time. If your card balance is too low, the refund waits as pending until funds arrive. A bank-payment refund with too little balance simply fails.

Disputes, holds and terms

Montonio's published service terms give it wide room to act. The card terms let it ask the processor to suspend card payouts if it believes you have breached, or will breach, the agreement. They let it ask for an advance payment to cover expected losses. If dispute or fraud levels run too high, it can raise your fees or suspend and end card services without notice. When a dispute opens, the disputed amount comes out of your balance until the issuer rules, which Montonio says can take up to three months. Its help centre says the €20 fee is not returned even if you win; the Stripe-era card terms said the opposite, returning dispute fees when the issuer overturned a dispute.

Those service terms all sit on top of Montonio's General Terms & Conditions, which we could not find published. You can read the version you accepted in the partner system after signing up, but not before. On cancellation, Montonio's help centre says only the signatory user can request deactivation. Requests are reviewed within three business days, and you are still invoiced for the following billing cycle.

Reputation and complaints

On the Bank of Lithuania register the licence is active, with no measures listed against it. We found no lawsuits or enforcement actions naming Montonio. On Trustpilot, Montonio had a TrustScore of 4.2 from 132 reviews in October 2026. The star breakdown is polarised: 91% five-star and 9% one-star, with nothing in between. Positive reviews, many from merchants, praise responsive support and the all-in-one payments and shipping setup. Recent one-star reviews from October 2026 include a shopper whose payments failed across several cards, both typed in and through Google Pay, and a business rejected during verification without an explanation. Older one-star reviews from merchants complain of slow support and of invoices continuing after cancellation. Montonio replied to about a quarter of negative reviews. The review pool is small, and it mixes merchants with shoppers who used Montonio at someone else's checkout.

Who Montonio suits

Montonio fits a small or mid-size online store registered in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania that sells mainly to local shoppers, who are used to paying by bank. It suits stores that want payments, pay later and parcel-locker shipping from one integration at a price published in advance. It suits a store on a mainstream ecommerce platform best, and fits Core-plan merchants with a high share of bank payments especially well. It fits less well if you sell in person, sell mainly to customers outside its five markets, take many non-EU or business cards, or run a low-ticket store where a €20 dispute fee wipes out the margin. Ask for the General Terms & Conditions before you sign up.