Source: Solaris
Leading UK food and catering supplier JJ Foodservice has partnered with Solarisand Ecospend to implement an open banking payment solution to enable its 100,000 customers to pay for orders direct from their business bank accounts instead of through card transactions.
The solution enhances JJ Foodservice’s customer journey, making payments and refunds instant while also giving the wholesaler a huge potential for cost savings by removing the cost of high business card transaction charges, which can be as much as 3%. Currently 44% of customers are already choosing to pay by this option.
JJ Foodservice is one of Britain’s fastest growing food wholesalers, reporting sales of £270m for the year ended March 31st, a 22.5% increase of the previous year. The Enfield headquartered firm has 11 depots around the UK and employs more than 750 people.
Mick Dudley, Chief Technology Officer at JJ Foodservice said: “By partnering with Solaris and Ecospend we are making our customer journey that bit smoother, by offering a payment method that can take payments and provide refunds in real-time. This will help to give customers a more real-time view of their costs with us, while also offering of another payment method. It also decreases our reliability on card transactions, which typically incur high transaction fees. Such cost savings play a key role in helping us to continue to grow the business and after one month we have already seen 44% customers opt to place orders via the open banking solution.”
The closed loop direct account-to-account ‘pay by bank’ solution will be offered to customers at the online checkout, which will signal the start of the open banking journey via Ecospend with payments crediting a JJ Foods account held with Solaris. Refunds and returned payments can also be initiated to debit the same account.
Andy Lyons, Managing Director of regulated Sales Europe at Solaris said: “JJ Foodservice is a true innovator in the sector and this solution offers customers a new way to pay, while enabling JJ Foodservice to make substantial savings on typically high business card charges. The successful roll-out of the solution is testament to our strong partnership with Ecospend and our capability to bring innovative payment solutions to a range of industry sectors.
James Hickman, COO at Ecospend added: “This is a fantastic example of how partnerships can provide businesses with sector leading payment solutions, helping organisations that process a high volume of transactions to stand out in their market.”
About Solaris
Solaris is Europe’s leading embedded finance platform empowering the future of financial services. The tech company enables businesses to easily provide trusted and innovative financial experiences to their customers. Through smart APIs, partners can embed financial services quickly and compliantly into their own product offerings. Solaris is headquartered in Berlin and employs over 750 people at eight locations in Europe, India and Singapore. Combined net revenue in 2021 exceeded 100 million euros, representing growth of over 90 percent year-on-year.
About Ecospend
Founded in 2017, Ecospend is a UK based Open Finance technology platform provider. The beginning of the year saw Ecospend win the largest Open Banking contract with HMRC against over 80 companies; it now processes payments for Self Assessment, VAT, Corporation Tax and PAYE. In less than six months, Ecospend has processed over £1bn in Open Banking payments from its client portfolio.
Its proprietary technology underpins a product portfolio which is divided into two core areas: Payments (pay-by-bank) services and Marketplace solutions. Authorised by the FCA for Payments (PISP) and Data (AISP), it has full API bank connectivity within the UK and is expanding its coverage in Europe. The self-financed business employs a team of 50, is headquartered in London and will open an EU office in H1. For more information, see: https://www.ecospend.com/.