Paper.id launches B2B BNPL to help Indonesians SMEs ramp up

By Leandra Monteiro

Paper.id, Indonesia’s largest B2B invoicing start-up with US $640million in invoices processed since the start of the year, announces the launch of BNPL for small to medium businesses. For customers that opt-out of financing, Merchants can still take advantage of BNPL through a new feature called “Get Paid Faster” (GPF). These features will provide desperately needed financing to more than 200,000 SMEs in Indonesia.

Paper.id is releasing these products to address a major pain point of SMEs coming out of COVID. Many SMEs had to constrict their business activities under COVID and are finding it hard to ramp up with new consumer demand without a source of capital financing. Post-pandemic, payment liquidity to suppliers is currently at 75 days, 32% slower than pre-pandemic rates according to research by Atradius. This creates strain on cash flow across the supply chain. Due to cash flow constraints, an average of 1 or 2 retail businesses go out-of-business in Indonesia each day.

To facilitate underwriting, earlier this year, Paper.id brought in strategic investor Buana Sejahtera Group, who owns a group of companies in the finance, logistics, and hospitality sectors to expand Paper.id’s financing capabilities and tap into a more traditional supply chain.

“We have invested in several companies especially in the fintech and payment space in Indonesia that we thought can synergize well with our group core business and other investments. We see Paper.id, with its unique offering of invoicing, payment, and fintech, as a startup that can not only digitize and unlock financing capabilities for our ecosystem, but also for other supply chain in Indonesia,” said Simon Pratama, Director of Buana Sejahtera Group.

“Based on our own internal data, most SME B2B buyers only have the option of paying their suppliers through cash or bank transfer. We unlock more options for the buyer with a BNPL and digital payment options, including credit card, regardless if the supplier actually provides payment terms or not. The exciting news is this will be made available to all of Paper.id’s existing digital invoicing customers,” said Yosia Sugialam, Co-founder of Paper.id.

The product flow can begin from either the Supplier or a Buyer. If a supplier wants to utilize the Get Paid Faster product, it can start by invoicing its buyer through Paper.id invoicing platform. Then, the buyer can acknowledge that the invoice is correct and contain the right information such as the quantity, product information and price. Validated invoice by validated suppliers and buyers, can seamlessly get instant payment from Paper.id ahead of its supposed payment term with a small fee.

Similarly, from the Buyer side, the buyer can input a purchase invoice or payout request to pay their suppliers with the digital payment options, including credit card, provided by Paper.id, regardless of the fact that their Suppliers have such payment option or not. Should the buyer require a term extension, they can seamlessly opt into the BNPL payment method that Paper.id provides, then repay at a later date. Instead of paying at purchase, or even within 1 week, buyers can set a payment plan to extend payment by 30 days.

“The current state of the pandemic provides a unique opportunity for us to further help the SMEs back in business and bring more options for them to alleviate their cashflow crunch both operationally and financially. These two solutions have seen tremendous growth in the past few months,” said Jeremy Limman, Paper.id Co-founder and CEO. Paper.id has provided more than USD 10 million supply chain based financing and claimed that digital payment volume has tripled after the introduction of these two products.

While the free invoicing and bookkeeping still continues to grow, Paper.id sees the accelerated growth and adoption through these digital financing and payment products complete the trifecta of B2B transactions: Invoice / Business Document, Payment, and Financing.

“We have observed that a company that utilizes the financing, tends to use digital payment and invoicing as well. This becomes a positive feedback loop that keeps reinforcing itself, transforming and digitizing the whole supply chain,” Yosia concurred. “We are excited to see this digitization momentum, and looking ahead to not only transform multiple supply chain across different segments, but also empower the suppliers and buyers with the payment and financing options that they need,” Jeremy closes.