Shopify has partnered with Israeli B2B payments startup I mess launch a new bill payment tool designed to allow US-based business clients to manage their expenses and vendors through their platform.
It’s another step in Shopify’s plan to span the intersection of fintech and commerce, S noted.hruti Patel, Global Head of Monetization and Merchant Services Partnerships at Shopify.
The logic behind the new feature plays into the idea that if merchants can spend less time on tedious tasks like consolidating their invoices and paying bills, they can spend more time focusing on growing their business. Also it was driven in part by merchants requesting money-moving capabilities, Patel told TechCrunch in an interview.
“WWe’ve been on the fintech path since we introduced payments, with Stripe’s technology,” he said. “That gave us a lot of information about our payment data. And then we went out and offered Shopify Capital in 2016, which was designed to meet the micro and macro lending needs of our merchants. And then last year we introduced what we call Shopify Balance, which was almost like a money management tool.”
Shopify intentionally worked to embed bill pay into its existing product, and into the very place where its merchant customers conduct their business, because it wanted it to be a fully integrated accounts payable solution within store administration.
“If you look at how banks offer and financial institutions offer bill payment today, it’s a pretty nice redirection experience,” Patel said. “…But a lot of those experiences are pretty broken because they just link to a bank account and let them use it through that one payment method.”
Instead, he said, Shopify merchants will have the option to choose between funding sources, such as a bank account, Shopify balance, credit or debit card, or ACH bank transfer. They can even pay with credit cards even if a provider doesn’t accept them.
“It’s not just the cost choice of which payment method and how to choose it, but also the speed that we allow them to schedule payments,” Patel added. Shopify, for example, can allow payments to be made up to four days sooner than a traditional bank, he said. Merchants also have the option to pre-schedule payments.
The bill pay feature is free to its merchants, but there are “minimum fees” associated with certain payment methods, like a credit card, according to Patel.
“One of the reasons we wanted to do this for our merchants is to go back to some of the feedback we heard that bill pay is a pain point, especially for smaller merchants who can’t afford subscription plans very expensive,” he said.
Internally, having the ability to offer bill payment will give Shopify insight into how they spend and which vendors they spend with.
“And today, banks have that perspective, but they don’t really do anything with it, because they’re not running storefronts for small businesses,” Patel said. “What we want to do is really have that data that helps us drive more revenue for our merchants.”
Shopify declined to say how many merchants it has in the US, saying only that it works with “millions of merchants” overall.
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