Ankorstore: How one of Europe's leading B2B marketplaces offers flexible payment terms at checkout

Ankorstore: How one of Europe's leading B2B marketplaces started offering flexible payment terms at checkout

Merchant case study

By offering flexible payment terms in real-time to their buyers, as well as ensuring payment for sellers on the platform, B2B marketplace Ankorstore has grown a loyal base of over 200,000 loyal customers.Contents

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The Ankorstore & Hokodo story

The lowdown

Since partnering with Hokodo, Ankorstore has been able to improve their service by offering flexible payment terms on their platform. Hokodo’s full support with real-time buyer eligibility assessment, credit insurance and collections has meant:

Retailers (buyers) get a seamless online checkout experience - even on their first purchase
Retailers can choose to Pay Later, in 30, 60 or even 90 days
Brands (sellers) receive payment in full upon delivery of the goods

Hokodo is a very important part of our value proposition. Payment terms are a critical service for us, for both our brands and our retailers.

Nicolas D'Audiffret, Co-founder & CEO, Ankorstore

Meet Ankorstore

Ankorstore is a wholesale B2B marketplace that connects over 12,000 independent brands with more than 200,000 boutiques, retailers and e-retailers across Europe. Since raising a $283 million Series C in 2022, Ankorstore has grown rapidly into new regions, bringing its innovative platform to more buyers and sellers each month.

The Ankorstore team is passionate about making life easy for customers. They pride themselves on providing all the right tools and technology within a single, easy-to-use platform, making it simple for retailers to discover and stock a variety of authentic brands at great prices. Meanwhile, brands can sell directly to boutiques with reduced risk and operational burden. Everyone wins!

Giving customers what they want

Nicolas D’Audiffret, Ankorstore’s Co-founder and CEO, knew that offering flexible payment terms was a crucial part of meeting customer needs: “Trade credit is very important in our B2B market. It is a very compelling proposition for our retailers to have a B2B Buy Now, Pay Later option.”

As a pioneering, tech-savvy company, they were also intent on providing a frictionless user experience and replicating the B2C-like purchasing experience that B2B buyers have come to expect.

"A great user experience at checkout and great payment terms are what our customers are looking for”, says Pierre-Luc Joffre, VP of Finance and Revenue at Ankorstore.

So, they knew what they needed. In a nutshell, great Payment Terms for their retailers as a key driver of loyalty on the platform and to increase their customer's frequency of visits, conversion rates and average basket size.

‍Keeping it simple for buyers

Nicolas considered other options such as invoice factoring to solve the problem, but decided it was too complex and would detract from the customer’s online journey.

“Factoring was not simple enough. We like to propose simple solutions for our brands and retailers, and that’s why we chose the solution proposed by Hokodo.” ‍

Hokodo’s powerful APIs and close collaboration with Ankorstore’s tech team ensured a quick and simple integration into Ankorstore’s UK platform, which was completed in a single, one-week tech sprint.

Ankorstore is now able to make real-time decisions on a customer’s creditworthiness, meaning retailers can shop as normal and then access flexible payment terms at checkout, even on their first purchase.

Psst. Want to learn more about Hokodo's digital trade credit solution for B2B marketplaces of all shapes and sizes?

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‍Keeping it simple for sellers

On the other side of the marketplace, Ankorstore’s merchants are also paid in full upon delivery of the goods, which entirely removes credit risk and gives them the resources to focus on growing their businesses.

This ability to help both retailers and suppliers has played a crucial role in Ankorstore’s success, allowing them to build up a strong base of more than 200,000 loyal customers across Europe. ‍

“It’s about building the offer which makes it cheaper and easier for everyone to do business on Ankorstore”, says Pierre-Luc. “Payment terms are one of the key pillars of our business model which prevents anyone from doing business outside of our platform.”

Have your say

What's your biggest concern as a B2B marketplace operator?

Winning new business from buyers and sellers
Keeping buyers and sellers 'sticky' (i.e., avoiding platform bypass)
Providing a value-added payment experience

Bigger baskets, more often‍

Nicolas has seen first-hand the effect this has had on Ankorstore’s performance: “We did some testing and we can see that when we propose better payment terms we can increase the average order value (AOV). We know that when we cannot propose payment terms to some customers, we see a decrease in the conversion rate.”

‍Pierre-Luc also said that being able to offer payment terms in real-time at checkout has brought a number of benefits: “We definitely see the impact on conversion rate, also on the frequency of purchase and the basket value. The biggest value Hokodo has brought to us is helping us grow an extremely loyal customer base thanks to payment terms.”

We definitely see the impact on conversion rate, also on the frequency of purchase and the basket value. The biggest value Hokodo has brought to us is helping us grow an extremely loyal customer base thanks to payment terms.

Pierre-Luc Joffre, VP Finance & Revenue, Ankorstore

What’s next for Ankorstore?

Ankorstore is already established as one of the leading B2B marketplaces in Europe – but the team has even greater ambitions for the future.

“The plan is to continue to grow extremely fast across all of Europe,” says Nicolas.

They also want to continue to innovate and improve the service they provide to their customers. Pierre-Luc sees Hokodo playing an essential role in this process.

“Hokodo has been very supportive of all our crazy ideas in terms of innovation," he says. "Our goal is to reach a 100% acceptance rate for our retailers on our platform, and we have already made good progress towards that objective.” ‍

See it in action…

Want to find out how digital trade credit could help supercharge your marketplace? Book a call today for a no-pressure chat with one of our payments experts.

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