Why Should Online Marketplaces and On Demand Services Launch Embedded Payments?

In our last blog, we explored  the revolutionary concept of embedded financial services. 

In this, the second blog in our five-part series, we identify why online marketplaces and on demand services in particular are launching embedded payments specifically.

Understanding the Market Opportunity for Embedded Payments

Customer loyalty is at an all-time low, with 49% of consumers recently reporting that they would happily switch brands to take advantage of a coupon. But there is a significant opportunity for online marketplaces and on demand services to consolidate customer loyalty through the use of embedded payments.

In the B2C arena, the opportunity involves rolling out exciting new services that entice customers and enabling businesses to do more within a single App interface. By unlocking a wider range of capabilities, on demand services can proactively address inefficiencies in the markets they operate within. Flexibility in payments provides consumers with a real-world benefit that makes a proposition 'stickier'.

For online marketplaces, sellers can be encouraged to stay on specific platforms by being issued with a range of embedded payments solutions. 

If sellers could be issued with branded, prepaid cards for example, they can spend funds as and when they make a successful sale — rather than relying on time-consuming clearing processes. Better yet, sellers wouldn't have to ship products blind, having already been notified of payment. Online marketplaces can then encourage their users to make purchases from their own sites, pushing up revenues.

Let’s explore other reasons why customers are particularly receptive to embedded payments and financial service products.

Embedded Payments: Stronger Gains from Customer Engagement

We’ve listed the benefits of strong embedded payments and explained how this relates to customer behaviour:

• Boosted engagement — customers are especially receptive to new products and services
• Improved monetisation — a greater range of financial services increases the opportunity for customers to invest more attention in your product or service
• Increased lifetime value — with greater integration of services, customers have less reason to leave, as they can perform more functions in one place

What Do On Demand Delivery Companies Have to Gain?

We’ve identified several ways that gig economy delivery companies gain from embedded payments:

• It empowers drivers to reach financial independence
• Differentiation from their competitors in meaningful ways
• Builds sustained driver loyalty
• Gain insight into financial activity, tailoring further products to reflect driver needs
  
  

What Do Online Marketplaces Have to Gain?

Online marketplaces benefit from embedded payments in different ways, including:

• Empowering merchants to feel in control of their finances
• Enhancing payment journeys to feature split payments and tip collection 
• Creating new revenue streams as you own the end to end transaction volumes

For gig economy titans, the opportunities of embedded payments solutions are impossible to ignore. Successfully embedding payments, however, will depend on partnering with the right provider that understands your ambitions from the outset.

Unleashing the Full Potential of Embedded Payments

Flexible platforms can provide innovative on demand services and online marketplace providers with a suite of unique tools to drive customer loyalty in the digital age. Modern B2C and B2B customers can become reliable advocates of products and services that are hard for competitors to mimic, allowing the most customer-centric companies to thrive in highly competitive sectors.

By integrating dynamic APIs, companies can also alleviate some of the challenges associated with the inherently flexible gig economy model by ensuring drivers and staff are paid quicker and more efficiently. Launching a wider range of services can support gig workers to better manage their finances, encouraging them to stick with specific platforms over market rivals.

Modulr helps marketplaces and on-demand platforms install innovative and secure payment services that deliver an unbeatable competitive edge. We help you unlock operational efficiencies and eliminate processes that could hold you back, while also enabling you to offer the superior customer experience we've outlined above.

Use our Payments Map to analyse the current state of your operations or contact us to transform your business today.