We recently celebrated the one year anniversary of Sprinque!
Manoj, Juan and I met at Antler in Amsterdam in November 2020. After completing an intense 3-month Antler program, we received an initial investment from Antler and incorporated Sprinque on February 22nd, 2021.
To celebrate our one year anniversary, I wanted to reflect on what motivated me to start Sprinque and what excites me about our mission to help businesses grow safely in a digital world.
Prior to founding Sprinque, I was working for Arvato Financial Solutions, where I was involved in building and operating Buy Now, Pay Later solutions for the leading B2C and B2B marketplace in Europe.
There are 3 key lessons that I learned from this experience and they are the driving force behind Sprinque:
1. Online marketplaces are transforming traditional industries
Marketplaces, whether 3rd-party marketplaces or merchant-of-record platforms, are transforming how buyers buy, and how sellers sell. On the B2B-side, most B2B marketplaces are relatively new, but they are emerging across industries and are leading the digital transformation of their industries.
Marketplaces have the potential to bring huge efficiencies and opportunities for both buyers and sellers, by creating a safe and trusted online environment to transact.
From a seller perspective, marketplaces introduce sellers to new buyers and markets. Marketplaces even guarantee payments to sellers, in case buyers do not pay.
From a buyer perspective, marketplaces introduce buyers to a larger pool of sellers and a buyer can purchase from multiple sellers in a single transaction. Should a seller not deliver the agreed items, then the marketplace will often refund the buyer and recover the payment from the seller.
In addition to creating a safe environment to transact, marketplaces offer various ancillary services to buyers and sellers, including logistics, financial and insurance services. With all the data they control, marketplaces can offer better and cheaper services that are relevant to buyers and sellers.
2. The right payment experience drives exponential growth
Over the past two decades, there has been continuous innovation in making online purchasing and payments super easy for consumers. This includes one click checkouts and frictionless online payments, such as Buy Now, Pay Later where consumers can complete a purchase, just by entering their email address, and paying for their purchase after the goods have been delivered.
I have seen first hand how having the right online payment experience can have an enormous impact on growth, even for mature marketplaces. It attracts new customers and increases order conversion rates, average order values, and repeat order rates. The impact on Gross Merchandise Value is phenomenal!
However, B2B ecommerce is a couple of decades behind B2C ecommerce. There has been little to no innovation in how businesses purchase and pay online.
3. Getting net payment terms right is complex, especially in Europe
When selling online to business buyers, it is critical to offer net payment terms, but given the fragmented cultural, financial, and regulatory environment in Europe, this is no easy task. These challenges multiply for marketplaces, because many work with buyers and sellers spread out across Europe.
We have spoken to more than 150 B2B marketplaces across Europe and they are all struggling to find a good solution for offering net payment terms to their business buyers. Some are even trying to build in-house solutions, but to do so is complex and expensive.
It does not make sense for each marketplace to invest in building their own solution for offering net payment terms; it is not their core competence.
Sprinque B2B checkout platform
We are building these lessons learned into the Sprinque B2B checkout platform:
We are building the online B2B payments and net payment terms stack that covers Europe, so that marketplaces do not have to;
We take over default risk and guarantee payments from buyers, so that marketplaces can create a safe and trusted environment for buyers and sellers to transact;
Our platform makes it possible to offer fast and convenient payment experiences that will deliver growth.
We are just getting started and are helping to close the convenience gap between B2C and B2B ecommerce. If you want to learn more about how we can help your marketplace, do get in touch with me (mark@sprinque.com) or visit www.sprinque.com.