Everything You Need to Know About BNPL for SaaS

Contents:
Buy Now Pay Later: What It Is and How It Works
BNPL Purchase Example
Benefits of Buy Now Pay Later
How to Implement BNPL
Top 5 BNPL companies for SaaS

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is becoming more popular as a customer financing not only in e-commerce, but also in B2B SaaS. If you still don’t know what the BNPL business model is or how it works, this article is for you. We are going to talk about the basics of BNPL, what benefits it has and top 5 companies that provide BNPL for B2B SaaS businesses. Buckle up!

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Buy Now Pay Later: What It Is and How It Works

Buy Now, Pay Later is a type of financing that allows customers to make purchases and pay for them at a future date. Practically, it is a point-of-sale installment loan. A buyer pays off the cost of the purchase at regular intervals, typically monthly. In SaaS, it is usually implemented by a vendor to provide customers with the opportunity to pay monthly for annual plans.

Here Is How BNPL for SaaS Works

On self-serve websites it works like this:

Your customer chooses a subscription plan for your software and begins the checkout process. During checkout, they see a BNPL option along with other purchase options like Paypal, credit/debit cards. The offered BNPL plans may vary by provider. Many BNPL providers offer installment plans from several months to one year, while some offer payment terms up to 5 years.

After choosing the BNPL option, your customer fills out a short application directly on the checkout screen. The BNPL provider asks for some business, financial and ownership information to underwrite the customer. It can take days or even weeks to study documentation and make a decision about the loan. Meanwhile, Comfi uses automation, fast data analysis and machine learning-powered predictions to make decisions on the fly, making the buying experience better and motivating customers to keep doing business with a brand. The customer pays off the balance over time to the BNPL provider, and you as a vendor get the full sum upfront from the provider in a matter of hours or days.

The process of B2B BNPL purchase through a generated link usually goes like this:

You as a vendor negotiate the terms of the purchase with your B2B customer. It includes the price, and BNPL payment terms offered by the BNPL provider. You generate a payment link through the provider’s dashboard and send it to the customer. The customer clicks the link and gets to the checkout page. There they should verify their email, choose their subscription plan, and connect to their financial account. They put in the card number and make the first payment.

The BNPL provider pays you as a vendor the whole sum minus the provider’s fee. You deliver the services to the customer, and the customer makes payments to the BNPL provider according to the terms of the agreement.

Overall, the process of B2B BNPL purchase offline is similar to the online process, but with less reliance on digital communication and documentation. 

BNPL for SaaS Purchase Example

The BNPL option allows your customers to spread the total cost and pay in installments over several months instead of paying the full price right now. For example, let’s say an annual plan for your software costs $6000. Your customer decides using your BNPL checkout method that offers an installment plan over 12 months. Thus, the customer pays $500 immediately, and has 11 remaining payments of $500, each due one month apart. The BNPL provider pays you $6000 minus their fee in a few hours or days after your customer makes a purchase. The BNPL provider gets the money from your customer every month for over a year.

Benefits of Buy Now Pay Later

Turns MRR into ARR

Offering BNPL gives customers the option to buy a more expensive annual subscription plan as it still meets their budget. Thus, your MRR automatically turns into ARR.

Reduces financial burden

By offering BNPL as a payment option, you can help customers reduce the financial burden so they can stay within budget and complete the purchase. Also, getting approval from ‌decision-makers is easier when the purchase does not jeopardize the runway and doesn’t make a hole in the budget.

Saves runway

For a B2B SaaS business, runway is critical. BNPL helps your customers split up their payments and save runway, at the same time increasing yours. It also makes managing cash flow easier. Your customers always know how much money they should pay monthly, and can plan their pipeline accordingly. BNPL puts you ahead of the competition, because you provide a payment method that facilitates customers’ lives, and they are always grateful for that.

Cash upfront

Your recurring revenue turns into upfront cash. The BNPL provider pays you the whole sum upfront, and bears all risks by themselves. You are paid the full cost of the annual plan minus commission, while your BNPL provider collects installments. This means funding your growth without equity taken or debt created.

Higher LTV

Manageable installments are more likely to be closed faster, and customers are more open to making additional purchases. This will give you more opportunities to leverage cross-sell and upsell, and increase customer lifetime value (LTV).

Book a call with Comfi’s co-founder, Amal, to find out how he sees Comfi’s cons. The BNPL provider eliminates financial risks of customers unwilling to pay, as the provider manages the dunning process, as well as credit check. B2B does not deal with B2C problems, like high interest rates or something like these regulation changes in the U.S. Terms of the deal are always transparent and there are no hidden fees. Interest goes as low as 0% with a small service fee per transaction.

How to Implement BNPL

1. Choose the right financing partner to offer BNPL for your B2B clients.

2. Integrate BNPL into your billing system. Pay attention to integration methods like open API and no-code integration. BNPL software needs an agile architecture that will allow new integrations and the flexibility to customize offerings. Also, it should be equipped with high-performance analytics and strong security.

3. Advertise BNPL across all sales channels. Let customers know that now you provide a new payment method that can help them preserve the runway.

Read more on the topic of customer financing in our article.

Top 5 BNPL companies for SaaS

Comfi

Comfi is a Dubai-based privately-backed BNPL fintech startup that provides B2B SaaS vendors with a checkout that helps them close x2 more annual subscriptions. Our mission is to increase runway for B2B SaaS vendors and save runway for startups and SMBs.

Comfi’s pricing is applied on every transaction made through Comfi, and calculated based on your industry and annual sales volumes. This includes all payment gateway charges without any hidden fees. Installation of Comfi takes only a couple of minutes if you want to use our BNPL only for generating payment links and embedding them into your invoices or sending separately to your customers. If you want to integrate Comfi at your self-serve checkout through API, that will take around 7-10 working days depending on your backlog.

With Comfi, your customers can split their annual subscription payments into 12 tranches over 12 months. We help you ‌turn your MRR into ARR, reduce customer churn and grow revenue instantly.

Book a call with Amal, co-founder at Comfi, to explore how Comfi can boost your business.

Vartana

In 2022, Vartana has grown from being a self-serve financing platform to an all-in-one sales closing platform for any B2B business deal. Recently Vartana announced that it raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Mayfield with participation from several venture capitals, bringing its total raised to $19 million.

Today it has one of the longest payment plans of 4 years, and an automatic approval rate of 85%. To achieve this acceptance rate, the company created the Vartana Capital Marketplace, which is a network of enrolled lenders and funding partners. Vartana Capital Marketplace algorithms match each deal with the best available financing options. Sellers receive funds upfront while customers pay with the terms they need at the best possible rate. It helps speed up deals and loans approval.

Capchase

Capchase launched in 2020 as a part of a growing number of alternative finance companies, with underwriting specifically tailored to the recurring revenue business model of its borrowers. In September 2022, Capchase integrated with global SMB accounting software platform Xero. Capchase makes its lending decisions based on a company’s recurring revenue, and new integration with Xero enables it to make lending decisions faster and more accurately.

Capchase integrates with the company’s banks and accounting services and gives access to an offer immediately. It can improve the initial offer in less than 72 hours. Once approved, you can immediately withdraw your capital from their platform. Capchase allows you to access the capital in as little as 48 hours, and doesn’t put any restrictions on its withdrawal.

Tranch

Tranch uses credit risk modeling and open banking data to allow B2B customers to get SaaS contracts upfront at a discounted annual rate while still paying in installments. It joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 cohort and by now has raised $100 million in seed equity and debt funding.

Tranch makes expenses ‘bite-size’ for B2B customers, has payment terms of 3-12 months, and pays B2B vendor upfront within only 24 hours.

“Pay with Tranch” solves that huge and costly problem, by putting flexibility and choice at the heart of the payments process in a way that works simply and favorably for both suppliers and buyers.” — Philip Kelvin, Tranch CEO.

Ratiotech

Ratio is revamping SaaS pricing and financing, by offering a new set of tools to accelerate business growth. Ratio Boost applies machine learning to financial and behavioral data to improve product pricing and payments for churn risk, lifetime value, and willingness to pay.

Ratiotech helps companies expand their market and customer base with flexible payment options and provides funding based on a company’s recurring revenue. It also uses A/B testing to predict a customer’s willingness to pay.

“Payment flexibility, intelligent and iterative pricing, combined with a frictionless quote-to-cash process is the new strategic frontier for SaaS growth,” said Ashish Srimal, Ratio CEO. “We use data, machine learning and finance as tools to unlock this growth lever for our customers.”

Bottom line

Well, by now you are already pretty savvy in BNPL for SaaS! Congrats!

Implementing BNPL can level up your sales and boost your revenue without giving up equity or getting in debt with high interest to pay off. It is risk-free and easy to incorporate into any billing system. Consider implementing Comfi as your BNPL provider to close twice the amount of annual subscription contracts.

Learn more about BNPL with Comfi! Read more articles on our blog!

Let’s talk your revenue together

Amal Abdullaev

Co-founder at Comfi

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