Vico Food Box and MultiSafepay: Scaling from Italy to 25+ countries
Since then, the company has significantly expanded its presence across Europe, now operating in more than 25 countries and serving both Italian expats and international consumers passionate about Made in Italy.
We recently met Vico Food Box again at Netcomm Forum 2026, where we had the opportunity to speak with Debora Celentano, Co-founder & CMO, about the company's evolution, operational priorities, and the role payments continue to play in its growth journey.
Watch the full interview below to hear their story firsthand.
Vico Food Box’s mission is to bring the excellence of Made in Italy into the homes of Italian expats and Italian food lovers throughout Europe. Achieving that at scale means having a platform that’s easy to manage and a payment setup that converts, with the right local payment options for buyers across multiple markets.
The partnership with MultiSafepay has been central to that journey. Over the past few years, Vico Food Box has not only grown its reach across Europe but also resolved most of the payment and platform challenges that once stood in the way.
Vico Food Box’s international ecommerce growth
Vico Food Box was founded in 2019 by founders who knew the problem firsthand: living aboard and missing the food of home. What started as a personal mission quickly became an internationally recognized business.
Co-founder and CFO Antonio Guarrera reflects on where it started: “We started with nothing—just a small winery and a lot of willpower. My partners, Vittorio Colonna, Debora Celentano, and Gennaro Viscardi, and I worked hard to give many expats like us the chance to enjoy Italian food and feel at home, even when far away”.
Today, Vico Food Box is an established international business. Key markets include Germany and France - where demand is driven by a large Italian expat population and a strong interest in products like pasta and tomatoes - and the Netherlands, Vico Food Box's first open market and a key hub for the distribution of refrigerated products. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are also strong performers, with consumers showing a clear preference for Italian spirits, especially wines and liqueurs.
Shoppers on the Vico Food Box website are Italians living abroad and food lovers who want a genuine taste of Italy. They have access to a catalog with more than 5,000 products, from widely distributed brands to niche regional producers.
“We want to make those who live far away feel at home. That’s why we consider Vico Food Box not as a product ecommerce but as a service one: those who receive our box enjoy a real experience, a journey through flavors that take them back to their homeland”, explains Antonio.
That philosophy shapes everything, including how the business handles problems. “We aim for maximum customer satisfaction. We are always ready to provide support, refunds, or coupons when issues occur with shipments, damaged, or missing goods. And it seems that we are on the right track: our customer satisfaction rate is over 90 percent".
Online payment solutions for ecommerce growth
Why Vico Food Box chose MultiSafepay
Vico Food Box faced multiple challenges regarding payments. Starting with the need for better usability of the platform, especially regarding reporting and reconciliation: “The previous supplier often struggled to reconcile statements with balances, occasionally providing incorrect balances or blocking payments during month-to-month transitions. These issues have been completely resolved with your solution, which has provided us with an intuitive and efficient dashboard, allowing us to gain complete and accurate insights into business trends.”
That shift has been felt beyond the numbers. The MultiSafepay platform helped centralize payment operations and simplified day-to-day reporting, becoming a key tool for the finance team in managing payment operations efficiently.
Cost transparency was equally important. “Thanks to your pricing model, we were also able to achieve the goal of lowering the shopping cart costs in order not to charge too much the final customer".
And then there’s the relationship itself. “With Stefano Calce, Business Sales Manager, and Luca Calce, Account Expert, we got on very well right from the start, thanks to the fact that we are from the same geographic area. Beyond the characteristics offered by your solutions, we are delighted with your customer management. The success of this partnership is not only related to the efficiency of the platform but also to the team behind it, which makes the difference”.
Thanks to MultiSafepay, we improved the management of reporting and solved the difficulties related to the reconciliation of payments
Payments built for security and scale
For Antonio security is another area where the partnership has delivered. Tokenization is a key capability the business has adopted.
Tokenization protects sensitive data, such as credit card information, by replacing it with a randomized token. The original data is stored securely in an associated vault, meaning that in the event of a breach, fraudsters cannot access sensitive customer information.
For customers, this means faster, more seamless checkout. For merchants, it means fewer abandoned transactions and less liability.
“The ease in completing the purchase is no small advantage, especially for customers who are not very familiar with online shopping”.
Unsettled transactions are another area where visibility matters. Without clear oversight, it can be diffcult to distinguish a delayed payment from a fraud risk. MultiSafepay's fraud controls give merchants the ability to review suspicious payments and orders in real time. “It is important to protect the merchant's and customers' security. And with you, we feel perfectly safe”, says Antonio.
MultiSafepay's fraud control system allows us to check suspicious payments immediately. With you, we feel perfectly safe.
Growth driven by optimized online payments
Working closely with Vico Food Box, we helped optimize the checkout experience, expand payment method coverage, and support the operational needs of a fast-growing cross-border business.
One of the first steps was improving the checkout itself. We supported Vico Food Box in transitioning from WooCommerce to PrestaShop, where we implemented our payment components to seamlessly integrate the payment process into the merchant's site—without any external redirection. This not only speeds up the shopping experience, but also keeps customers on the site, making them feel more secure when it's time to pay, which typically leads to higher satisfaction.
Our payment components also enable a dynamic checkout, displaying the most suitable payment methods for each transaction based on factors such as the user's geographic location or the total amount spent.
Within a few months of going live, our payment components have contributed to a 20% increase in transactions on the Vico Food Box site, signaling the successful optimization of the checkout process.
Expanding payment method coverage has also been equally important to the success of our collaboration: “It was crucial to integrate MyBank, which put an end to all the issues our customers had in executing immediate transfers. Also, adding digital wallets such as Google Pay and Apple Pay made a difference. Overall, you have helped us build a significantly more user-friendly checkout for all customers. To date, 80-85% of the transactions on our platform are done through MultiSafepay”. Although we are the primary payment provider on the Vico Food Box platform, the merchant continues to maintain other external providers and payment systems purely as a precaution.
Looking ahead, we plan to add additional payment methods, such as Alipay+ and WeChat Pay, in line with the merchant's plans for international expansion.
“Trust is the basis of everything. We strongly believe in the value of partnerships, and as a young company, we need to trust those who work with us. When joining a partnership, everyone, customers and suppliers, must come out on top. All of them have to grow together. The combination of competitive pricing and a platform built around our needs has made MultiSafepay a genuine growth partner.”
Future plans for international expansion
The next chapter for Vico Food Box is already taking shape. The team has its sights set on the USA market and further European growth. But that is not all. For Vico Food Box, an ecommerce platform dedicated exclusively to the foreign B2B target market and further projects to promote an ever-widening knowledge of Made in Italy will also come soon. “We would like to open temporary stores in Europe to offer Vico Food Box branded products and some of the many local specialties that make our food and wine culture great".
We’re looking forward to being part pf the next phase – supporting Vico Food Box as they take on new markets and new ambitions.
Supporting international growth with the right payment partner
For fast-growing ecommerce businesses, payments are more than a transaction tool: they are a key driver of customer experience, conversion, and international scalability. MultiSafepay helps merchants like Vico Food Box simplify payment management, optimize checkout performance, and offer the right payment methods to customers across multiple markets.
Discover how MultiSafepay’s online payment solutions can help you improve conversion, simplify payment operations, and support international ecommerce growth.
