Offering financing is now essential for B2B marketplaces aiming to enhance user experience, drive growth, and stay competitive. Whether you are thinking of building a financing solution yourself or are trying to understand the financing provider landscape, it is a strategic decision with significant implications on your growth and customer relationships that can be difficult to reverse.
If you have decided to work with an embedded financing partner specifically, you are still left with numerous options available. So, what factors should you prioritise to align with your goals and customer needs? In this final installment of our three-part series on marketplace financing solutions, we delve into the critical considerations for selecting an embedded financing partner.
How the right partner unlocks growth
Choosing the right embedded financing partner can significantly enhance your marketplace by offering tangible benefits:
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Differentiate your brandStand out in a crowded market by offering flexible payment options to buyers and quick payouts to suppliers. This unique value proposition will attract more customers and foster loyalty.
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Grow fasterPartner with a provider that scales alongside your business, offering adaptable solutions, higher credit limits, and broader geographic coverage. This flexibility supports your expansion into new markets and accommodates larger transactions.
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Improve your customers’ experienceEnhance satisfaction for both buyers and suppliers with seamless onboarding, quick approvals, and reliable payouts. A smooth financial experience encourages repeat business and strengthens your marketplace’s reputation.
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Save timeStreamline your operations by collaborating with a partner that manages complexities like payments, risk management, collections and customer support. This allows you to focus on core business activities and growth initiatives.
Coverage: Industry and geography
Industry and geographic coverage are crucial factors for a successful partnership. Expertise in your industry indicates the provider understands its specific challenges and can offer tailored solutions, maximizing the likelihood of success. For marketplaces serving buyers and suppliers across different regions, it’s essential that the provider supports those areas. If they don’t, ask about their process for expanding to new countries to avoid the risk of switching providers later due to limited geographic coverage.
What should you look for?
Industry expertise: Make sure the provider understands your industry’s financial needs. Check for existing clients in your sector and the solutions offered to them.
Geographic reach: Choose a provider that supports the regions where your buyers and suppliers operate. If they don’t yet, ensure there’s a clear plan and timeline for enabling missing markets. Also, verify if the provider supports your relevant currencies.
Risk: Eligibility, acceptance, and credit limits
Partnership’s value to you relies on provider’s ability to finance as many of your buyers as possible and offer them meaningful credit limits. Besides focusing on the value today, find out provider’s flexibility in revising limits as your buyers grow. Limited ability or willingness to revise limits might negatively affect your future growth prospects.
What should you look for?
Eligibility and acceptance: Understand how the provider determines eligibility and which of your buyers qualify for financing. Check the average acceptance rate and look for a provider with broad range of data points for risk assessment criteria to ensure many of your buyers qualify.
Credit limits: Opt for a provider with industry-leading credit limits and a clear process for increasing limits as buyers grow or demonstrate strong payment behaviour.
Operations: Buyer onboarding and payout timelines
Efficient processes are critical post-launch and can make or break daily operations. Ensure your buyers are onboarded quickly so both you and they can start benefiting immediately. The same goes for supplier payouts. Look for evidence that funds reach suppliers promptly.
What should you look for?
Buyer onboarding process: Choose a provider with a transparent onboarding process and clear requirements. Understand what might cause onboarding delays and how frequently they occur. Ensure you have direct access to the operations team for resolving onboarding delays quickly.
Payout timelines: Select a provider that guarantees fast payouts and has a track record of meeting SLAs. Ensure you have direct communication with the operations team for quick issue resolution and compensation in case of SLA breaches.
Implementation: Flexibility, customisation and time to market
How the solution integrates with your product, both in terms of functionality and branding, and how fast is crucial to maximizing value quickly and throughout the partnership. Seamless implementation that fits your workflows and brand increases the chances of success. While tailored solutions are important, they should not delay time-to-market—you want to start leveraging financing volumes as soon as possible. The longer the implementation takes, the higher the partnership’s potential upside must be to justify the investment.
What should you look for?
Use case flexibility: Choose a provider that can adapt their solution to your specific customer journey and workflows.
Customisable (white-label) solutions: Opt for a provider offering white-label solutions, allowing you to maintain your brand identity throughout the financing process, strengthening trust and loyalty.
Time to market: Select a provider that delivers a fast time-to-market, whether you need interface or API integration.
Ready for the next step?
B2B marketplaces partner with finmid to deliver tailored financing solutions that fuel growth and optimize operations. finmid’s platform integrates seamlessly with your customer journey, brand, and workflows, enabling marketplaces to scale faster, stand out from competitors, and enhance the customer experience while streamlining processes. With extensive geographic coverage and industry-leading credit limits, we help you maximize the value of your financial partnerships.
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Delight your suppliers globallyLeverage finmid’s extensive reach across 40 countries and 35+ currencies, enabling early payouts to suppliers around the world.
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Empower your buyers to growOffer high and adaptable credit limits that scale with your marketplace, providing your buyers with the financial flexibility they need to grow.
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Strengthen your brandOffer financing services fully under your own brand, ensuring a consistent and trusted experience for your customers.
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Launch quicklyChoose from fast, straightforward integration options—whether via a ready-to-use dashboard or API—to get your financing platform up and running swiftly.
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Count on dedicated supportBenefit from ongoing support and expertise from our team, committed to your success at every stage of the partnership.
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