How Finnishteacher.fi scaled her teaching practice with secure payments

Taru Eloranta has been teaching Finnish since 1998. A qualified teacher and a native Finn, she has taught in Finnish primary and vocational schools, in state integration courses, and abroad at the School of Nordic Languages in Riga and the University of Latvia. Along the way, she taught Finnish to staff at companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, and to a long line of independent learners who simply wanted to speak the language.

For years, private teaching sat alongside her main job. She is candid about how it started: she took on friends of friends partly to earn a little extra, and found she loved it. It was only in 2020 that she realised she could do it for a living.

Rather than leap, she began part-time, keeping her teaching work in Helsinki while she learned what running a business actually involved.

The first year I made -800€. But I was proud of myself!

– Taru Eloranta, Founder, finnishteacher.fi

A first year at a loss, and proud of it, because she had proven to herself it could work. Roughly five years on, finnishteacher.fi supports her and her family.

Today she teaches online in small groups, one-on-one, and out on walking tours in Helsinki, at levels from absolute beginner to intermediate. Her students are largely expats building a life in Finland, alongside learners further afield. Her method is built around speaking from the very first lesson.

My lessons are not lectures. You will learn, and you will speak.

– Taru

They seem to agree. finnishteacher.fi holds a perfect 5.0 across its Google reviews, many left by people who arrived in Finland with no Finnish at all and credit her with helping them find their feet.

The challenge: Selling lessons across borders, on her own

Running a teaching business single-handedly means Taru is also the one responsible for payments, accounting, and everything in between. Her students are spread across the world, and that shapes how she thinks about checkout. Two things matter to her above all: it has to be simple, and it has to be reliable.

Simple, because every extra payment option is one more thing that can confuse an international customer or fail at the wrong moment. Taru's rule is that fewer, clearer options mean fewer abandoned carts and fewer refunds.

Reliable, because when you are the whole business, downtime is income lost with no fallback. And collecting money across borders carries its own costs: a direct international bank transfer once cost a student a €15 fee on a payment from Australia, the kind of friction that makes people think twice about signing up.

The solution: A recommendation she could trust

Taru hadn't heard of Montonio. It reached her the way a lot of good things reach small businesses: through someone she trusted, an acquaintance who knew the payments world and recommended it without reservation.

I was recommended Montonio. I trust him, so the decision was easy. The onboarding was simple, which is important for me.

– Taru

She added Montonio's payments to her online store, offering both bank and card payments. She leans toward bank payments herself, but the point is that students can pay whichever way suits them, without the cost or delay of a manual transfer. Getting started was quick, and the price was one she felt was fair.

The results: Trust on both sides of the checkout

What Taru values most is how little she has to think about it. She has effectively never needed to contact support. One refund, handled without issue. No problems on her side, and none from her students.

Montonio is easy and trustworthy. I haven't had any problems, and neither have my clients. They sign up in my webstore, make the payment, and it has always gone smoothly.

– Taru

For a business that runs on international trust, that quiet reliability is the whole point. It lets her students, wherever they are paying from, feel safe, and lets her keep her attention on teaching rather than on the mechanics of getting paid.

Working in an international field, there are all kinds of worries. But Montonio makes sure I don't get ripped off, and that my clients can trust the system too.

– Taru

Looking ahead: More ways to learn Finnish

Taru is clear about what she wants, and it isn't empire-building. She wants to keep teaching, and to keep making the learning better.

I am happy to teach; that is what I do best. I want to continue developing my courses and finding new ways to make learning Finnish practical and enjoyable.

– Taru

She has several ideas for new courses and events in the works. One practical change is already on her list: bringing her private lessons, still invoiced by hand, into the same system through Montonio's payment links, so the last manual part of her billing can work like the rest.

For someone who started with an -800€ year and kept going, the next chapter looks a good deal more certain.