Study: Business Buyers Want PayPal-Like Simplicity and Automation When Paying by Invoice
In a recent study Billie conducted together with leading German business school HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, we took a closer look at the enormous potential of B2B e-commerce in general and, in particular, the role that different payment methods play in it. In this report, more than 800 business buyers in German companies were questioned regarding their use of established payment methods, their satisfaction with them along various dimensions, and the potential of alternative payment methods, especially Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL).
B2B e-commerce, although significantly larger in potential than its B2C counterpart, is still waiting for its big breakthrough. While we've all comfortably been doing our personal shopping online for 20+ years now, in a professional context, we're too often still tied to dusty, analog processes that make business purchasing anything but smooth.
"Payment by invoice often requires a registration or onboarding process in which business customers have to prove the actual existence of their company and their liquidity. Flexibility is therefore low and the processing effort high—this is also reflected in the results of the report. At the same time, the desire for an overall solution that is both reliable and cost-efficient as well as simple and fast is crystallizing," says Christian Grobe, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Billie.