Mollie and Klarna collaborated to ensure that merchants can provide a superior customer journey with a frictionless checkout experience and freedom and flexibility while making payments.

It is not uncommon for consumers to abandon their cart during checkout. Among the reasons behind interrupted purchase journeys are confusing processes, the desire to try a product before purchasing it, and payment methods not living up to the standards of the buyer

Consumers want a flexible way to pay, and if there is too much friction, they will navigate away without thinking twice. That’s where Swedish FinTech company Klarna comes in, offering customers the freedom to pay at a later stage in several instalments without merchants having to accept any of the risks.

Founded in 2005, Klarna is known for its “Buy Now, Pay Later” model that offers shoppers interest-free financing on retail purchases over a period of instalments. The company provides an e-commerce payment solutions platform for merchants and shoppers. Its platform gives customers the freedom to choose how and when to pay to offer the possibility to make purchases with direct payments, pay after delivery options, and instalment plans.

At the same time, business owners seek the benefits during the purchase journey, like the simplicity of use, contained costs and efficient maintenance. Dutch payments company Mollie makes sure that entrepreneurs can integrate Klarna’s flexible payment method in the easiest, most efficient way possible.

Mollie is a pioneer in the payments industry and one of Europe’s fastest-growing payment service providers (PSP). Founded in 2004, its mission is to help businesses grow and democratise the digital economy by simplifying financial services. Currently, the company is serving a fast-growing customer base with a highly localised offering and transparent pricing, as well as providing a scalable and modular technology platform built to integrate a diversified financial product portfolio. This results in a frictionless experience for its merchant customers.

Project and Implementation Overview

E-commerce is brimming with innovation and, during the pandemic, a growing number of SMEs were forced to move their businesses online for the first time. These small players needed products and services to support everything from the creation of their online retail site to the full checkout experience. To serve this clientele, Mollie built a platform using propriety, agile and API technology to facilitate companies of all sizes to scale and grow by using different payment methods and industry-leading seamless customer onboarding with automated due diligence and risk assessment.

Earlier in 2021, Mollie’s research found that 46% of all SME merchant revenue now comes from their web shops. The challenge for merchants, particularly SME merchants, however, was to level up their e-commerce experience to make it a viable long-term channel. Today, that’s all about offering a seamless, on-demand, personalised experience that caters exactly to the consumer’s demand.

When end-customers are making payments, Mollie’s solution ensures that they stay on the customer’s branded e-commerce platform during the entire transaction process, rather than being redirected to a new page. These efforts help to replicate a physical shopping experience for the end-user and have helped Mollie’s customers to increase their conversion rate by up to 7%.

Klarna and Mollie joined forces with the objective to create a simpler and more flexible payment experience for both merchants and customers. This partnership combines the flexibility of Klarna and the simplicity of Mollie. Mollie acts as a link between Klarna and the merchants, allowing web shop owners to implement various features that make the customer’s payment experience as simple as possible.

Some features of the product are:

1. Provision of access to all major payment methods with a single contract.
2. Added reliability through multiple acquiring banks.
3. Compatibility with all major e-commerce payment methods.
4. Custom-branded checkouts and multiple payment methods to boost conversion.
5. Easy integration of Mollie payments with the merchant website and quick onboarding with no minimum costs, no lock-in contracts, and no hidden fees.

Benefits Achieved

The plugins Mollie developed for each major e-commerce platform allowed for easy integration of the Klarna solution into existing merchants’ web shops.  Together, Klarna and Mollie ensured that merchants could provide a superior customer journey, including a frictionless checkout experience and the freedom and flexibility for customers to choose when and how they want to pay. This enabled the merchants to improve conversion rates, increase average order value and ultimately drive customer loyalty.

Some other benefits include:

• New customers of Mollie now have Klarna’s payment solutions as a standard in their offer. Meanwhile, the web shop owners who are already using Mollie can add Klarna’s payment solutions at a touch of a button.
• Simpler payment methods are provided, as both startups aim to make online shopping as easy as possible.

 Conclusion

As detailed above, the two companies shared a vision of providing an easier online shopping experience. With their partnership, e-commerce companies, particularly SMEs, could offer their customers more freedom and flexibility in terms of payments for the first time. This meant that they allowed their customers to benefit from an extra service by paying in arrears, sometimes even being able to try the product at home before completing the payment.

Key Facts

Supplier: Mollie
Headquarters: Netherlands
Founded: 2004
Client: Klarna
Solution: Mollie