By Charlie Conchie
Santander has launched a business-to-business (B2B) buy-now pay-later service which claims to be the first of its kind.
The Spanish lender’s corporate division has struck a deal with credit firm Allianz Trade and business-to-business payments platform, Two, to launch the first global B2B buy-now pay-later platform for multinational corporates.
The new product will provide a platform for big firms to defer payments at checkout while allowing suppliers to pocket their cash.
The launch follows last year’s flurry of investment into the B2B BNPL market as investors looked to tap into surging demand from cash-strapped firms looking to take greater control of their cost base.
Smaller firms have also been struggling with payment terms since the pandemic when many corporates stretched the times of their payments and left sellers struggling for cash.
Santander’s global head of receivables said easing the transfer of payments between firms could be a “game changer” for sellers.
“The fact that buyers have to use personal or corporate credit cards is still hindering B2B transactions,” he said in a statement.
“Enabling businesses to maintain their payment habits within 30 or 60 days of their invoices, in an e-commerce environment will be a big differentiator for sellers, while adding a major game changer: all concerns about non-payment risk are now removed, and their cash flow is preserved at all times.”
The firms added that the tool was powerful for firms dealing with “huge sales volumes across different countries”.
The three-way partnership will see Allianz Trade assess credit requests while Santander Corporate Investment Banking make financing decisions on the spot, and Two providing the technology to facilitate the payments.
“All this process is streamlined and set up through Two’s BNPL technology. Everything happens in a fraction of a second, without the end user even realizing it,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Santander’s deal marks an expansion of its BNPL offering after the bank announced the launch of a consumer product, Zinia, last year.
Banks have been increasingly edging into the consumer space in a bid to eat the lunch of the fintech first movers like Klarna and Clearpay.
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