From mobile pioneer to international digital partner
Framna – with Jan Gerard Gerrits, Technical Director
In 2012, four colleagues decided to leave their permanent jobs. They were building apps for the first generation of smartphones – BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile – but could see that the market was changing at breakneck speed. They wanted to stay ahead of the curve and took the leap. In September 2012, Move4Mobile was born.
Jan Gerard Gerrits remembers the early days well: “We were one of the few in the Netherlands doing this. The apps we built went around the world. That gave us the confidence: we can do this better and differently, if we do it ourselves.”
With the help of an investor who brought in the first commissions, the founders were able to get started immediately. Two years later came the big breakthrough: a commission from Rabobank.
The baptism of fire: SmartPin
Rabobank asked Move4Mobile to participate in mobile payment pilots. This quickly led to a request to develop a completely new payment solution: SmartPin – a compact PIN terminal with its own app and back end.
For the young team, this was an enormous responsibility. “You build it yourself, but you have to host it all yourself too,” Jan Gerard explains. “For a client like Rabobank, it has to work flawlessly.”
Because Rabobank only worked with certified parties from its Preferred Suppliers list, Duocast became the hosting partner. It was a partnership that proved its worth immediately. “It feels almost too simple to say, but it just works. It is rock-solid stable. When you need each other a lot, that is usually not a good sign.”
From Move4Mobile to Move Agency
After the Rabobank success story, Move4Mobile continued to grow steadily. In 2022, the company merged with industry peer M2Mobi to form Move Agency. With around 150 employees, they built a strong position in the Dutch market.
But the ambition went further. “We knew another step was needed to really compete internationally,” Jan Gerard says.
The move to Framna
In 2023, investor Waterland came on board. This enabled Move Agency to merge with partners in Sweden and Denmark. Under the new name Framna, the organisation grew rapidly to 500 employees, with studios in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US.
The motivation for bringing Waterland on board was clear: greater firepower for international growth and acquisitions. “We are now genuinely on an acquisition path,” Jan Gerard says. “But always with the ambition to keep it manageable. For each studio, we want a team that knows each other – not an anonymous factory.”
The foundation remains the same
Despite all the changes, the technical foundation has always remained the same: reliability and security above all else. Framna works to ISO 27001 and is extending this with NEN 7510 and SOC 2, the American standard for demonstrable data security and internal controls.
Jan Gerard: “We have a simple philosophy when it comes to hosting and management: sleep well at night. Everything we build must be set up so that no one lies awake worrying about incidents. That means real-time backups, redundancy, and not cutting corners on hosting. It may cost more, but it gives everyone confidence.”
Framna recognises those same values in its partnership with Duocast. While Framna retains control of most solutions itself, it is precisely for critical components that having a partner who works from the same principles matters: stable, reliable, and no-nonsense.
