Sweden's Klarna & payment provider Billie enter into partnership

Through the cooperation with Billie, Klarna expands its own product offerings so that online merchants, in addition to Klarna’s own various payment methods for customers, will be able to offer Billie’s BNPL payment methods for businesses. Klarna thus becomes the world’s first payment provider to offer a comprehensive range of BNPL payment methods for both customers and businesses, Klarna said in a media statement.

Billie’s newly implemented payment methods can be directly activated by the businesses themselves and are seamlessly embedded in Klarna’s checkout process. No additional technical steps are required by online retailers. Both companies plan to launch Billie’s BNPL payment methods for Klarna merchants in Germany, in the first quarter of 2022, which will then be followed by a roll-out to other European markets.

Billie’s B2B BNPL payment methods will be available to all Klarna merchants with businesses as customers. This applies, for example, to online merchants in sectors such as DIY stores, electronics, home and garden, furniture, hotels and restaurants, stationary, and printing. With high shopping cart conversion rates of over 90, and shopping cart limits of up to €100,000, with Billie, online retailers can increase sales by up to 40 per cent, while increasing repeat purchases, according to Klarna.

The partnership gives Klarna access to one of the largest and still largely untapped markets: B2B commerce. According to studies, B2B commerce transaction volume is three to five times higher than that of B2C commerce. The increasing shift in businesses from offline to online purchasing processes will further accelerate growth in this sector.

"We are now at the cusp of significant disruption in B2B payments. Over the past few years, we have seen Buy Now, Pay Later payment methods increasingly replace traditional payment methods such as credit cards in the consumer segment. We are now seeing a similar trend in the business sector. BNPL is on the rise and continues to gain importance over traditional payment methods in the B2B segment, a development similar to the credit card revolution more than 30 years ago. However, until now, there aren’t any providers that offer the payment method in a fully automated way, and with a modern user interface, the way Klarna does for the B2C segment,” Christian Grobe, co-founder and co-CEO of Billie said in a statement.

“Through our partnership with Billie, we are expanding our product range to include an important area that is in demand by many of our merchants but not yet adequately served by us, for them as businesses and how they pay online. Klarna is the first payment provider able to offer merchants such a service, one which will be as seamless and secure as existing consumer offerings. Klarna is extremely well placed to serve over 250,000 of our merchants in this way and now together with Billie’s outstanding B2B product offering, it is a perfect complement,” Koen Köppen, CTO of Klarna said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)