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Construction marketplace Skrap scale their growth with 40% of payments on Kriya trade credit
Goal
Region
United Kingdom
Industry
Construction
The Challenge
Customers want credit terms, but the marketplace needs money up front to ensure that suppliers get paid timely
The Solution
Kriya Payments offering credit to their customers so that they can pay in 30 days or at the end of month following
How Skrap is building a new future for construction with integrated payments
Skrap, a leading construction tech marketplace, is reshaping the industry by connecting builders to the services they need, faster. Adding on Kriya Payments' embedded credit solution has enabled the business to accelerate their growth, offering a novel way for construction companies to access equipment and materials efficiently, with flexible payment terms.
In a short time, the partnership has yielded:
£3 million worth of Skrap payments Skrap processes.
30% monthly repeat rate on Kriya products among buyers
Kriya delivering 40% of all checkout payments
Bringing the digital marketplace to construction
Founded in 2017, Skrap identified the need for a streamlined, digital approach in the construction sector. Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, along with his team, set out to tackle the challenges posed by a fragmented and complex industry.
These issues had become clear to Hilli and his co-founder when working in the industry themselves. Each site required different credit accounts with various suppliers, leading to inconsistent pricing and service quality on equipment. This created endless complexities in sourcing materials and equipment, with varying degrees of reliability and cost-effectiveness across suppliers.
Hilli aimed to create a single, trustworthy source for equipment and services, but this also meant solving the payment habits of an industry that was slow to change.
A scalable approach to credit
In an industry characterised by high-value, sporadic purchases, Skrap faced a significant challenge: their customers desired credit terms, but the marketplace required upfront payments to ensure timely compensation for suppliers. This gap created a critical need for a reliable and scalable credit solution.
In comparison to consumer-facing marketplaces, B2B marketplaces run on credit, from 30-60 days depending on suppliers.
The building industry is traditionally run on trust.. So in order to win the confidence of this segment, Skrap needed to be able to match the personalised, flexible service that customers would expect from a personal relationship.
As a marketplace this presented a challenge – sacrificing their cash flow for their customers.
“There’s a risk in relying on your own working capital, your own cash balance, so we needed some form of financing partnership to scale. Because even if we have millions in the bank, it still means that we're spending it all on facilitating their transactions and on our own operating costs.” - Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, Skrap
The power of digital trade credit with Kriya
Kriya Payments emerged as the perfect partner for Skrap, offering an embedded finance solution that catered to the unique demands of the B2B construction marketplace.
With Kriya’s innovative B2B PayLater solution , Skrap was able to provide their customers with flexible payment terms, while ensuring immediate payment to suppliers, thus bridging the gap between customer needs and operational requirements.
Using Kriya’s open API, Skrap were offering Kriya payments on their marketplace website within three days.
At purchase, credit checks and spending limits are set within seconds using Kriya’s instant decisioning, enabling their buyers to transact immediately upon receiving an approval.
At checkout, the customer can choose a ‘pay later’ button which executes the payment to the supplier, while scheduling the credit for the customer for their chosen payment term.
"Offering credit in-house is just not scalable. We need a partner who allows us to scale, who does that as their bread and butter business." - Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, Skrap
Building solid foundations with the future
Integrating with Kriya has enabled Skrap to create a stable, flexible financial model to enable their customers' purchases while protecting their balance sheet.
Kriya has processed nearly £3 million worth of payments to Skrap.
30% of buyers now use Kriya every month
Kriya now processes a substantial 40% share of all checkout payments
This partnership also enabled Skrap to focus expansion by offering the best service possible to both buyers and sellers on their platform, quickly adding and offering trade credit without the risk of creating their own solution.
Since the integration of Kriya’s financial solutions, Skrap has experienced significant growth across the UK.
The flexibility offered by Kriya’s credit products has made Skrap’s platform more valuable to customers, leading to increased loyalty and business growth. This partnership has not only empowered Skrap to manage its finances more efficiently but has also enhanced its reputation as a tech-forward customer-centric marketplace in the fast-moving, volatile construction industry.
“Kriya is key for our customers to be able to have the freedom to grow and expand without having to open a new credit account at every site. We’re a one-stop-shop where they can do everything in one place.” - Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, Skrap
Looking Ahead with Skrap and Kriya
As B2B industries face increased pressure to match the service and convenience of B2C marketplaces and digital experiences, we expect to see increasing demand for integrated credit solutions at checkout.
For businesses such as Skrap who are bringing much needed change to legacy industries, working with digital trade credit and payments solutions such as Kriya can help them bring their customers on the journey with less friction and superior service to drive meaningful transformation and sustainable growth.
Hear more from Hussain and our CEO, Anil
Our CEO and Co-founder, Anil Stocker, sat down with Hussain Hilli, CEO and co-founder of Skrap, to talk about the business and how Kriya is helping them scale. Watch the video below.
"Offering credit in-house is just not scalable. We need a partner who allows us to scale, who does that as their bread and butter business."
Hussain Hilli
CEO and Co-Founder
|
Skrap
“We expect our B2B revenues to double as a result of providing Kriya’s flexible payment terms to our trade and business buyers.” Stuart Zissman, Head of Financial Services
Halfords is the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling services and products. Its customers shop across over 1,750 fixed and mobile locations including, Halfords stores and garages, as well as its website, halfords.com.
Today, around a quarter of Halfords turnover is business-to-business. They sell to organisations of all sizes including SME businesses, garages, and workshops, offering discounts on automotive parts and tools with their Trade Card, as well as directly to larger commercial and government customers that buy in bulk.
However, like many well-established enterprises, Halfords found its future growth was challenged by the legacy processes of its past. Find out how they’ve teamed up with Kriya to remove the friction from their B2B commerce.
Halford's challenges
“The exam question” says Halfords’ Head of Financial Services, Stuart Zissman, “was how do we make selling to business and trade buyers less labour-intensive?” Having already overseen a successful consumer finance proposition at Halfords, it was clear to Zissman that their B2B offering had potential to grow by introducing a simple and effective credit solution.
1. B2B buyers expect payments terms
“All successful B2B propositions have some sort of financial support” Zissman explains. Whether large or small, Halfords’ business buyers want to be invoiced on payment terms. This is especially beneficial for garages and workshops, which thrive on efficient working capital cycles, allowing them to source parts upfront and defer payment until they have received compensation for their services.
Halfords recognised the opportunity to enhance their offerings by providing scalable trade credit, which was previously untapped. As Zissman says, "offering payments completes the circle."
2. Manual, unscalable processes were holding back growth
Halfords' hands-on approach to B2B processes presented an opportunity for greater scalability and growth. Wholesale orders, managed via account managers, involved manual quotes and purchase orders, which added complexity.
“We’d like to say yes to every single customer that wants to order from us,” says Head of Trade Card, Chris Millan. However, processing these detailed orders for existing buyers took time, limiting the retailer's ability to proactively attract new business and expand their account base.
What Halfords sought was a way to make their B2B offering more accessible and achieve a better economy of scale.
“We work with sole traders, business customers and government entities. Kriya is the only supplier that could support all three.” Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
The search for a solution
Recognising the need for change, Halfords set out to find a way to modernise its B2B offering. With Kriya's 12-year track record and willingness to collaborate on a solution for their unique requirements struck a chord with Halfords.
A solution for all B2B buyers
Halfords has a diverse buyer base and needed B2B payment terms that could be offered to limited companies, government entities and sole traders.
Multichannel
With trade customers already purchasing online and in-store, Halfords needed a solution to offer payment terms holistically across their sales channels.
Risk expertise
With their focus on Motoring and Cycling, Halfords sought a partner with strong expertise in finance and payments, including robust credit and fraud detection capabilities, to help onboard their buyers.
“We are experts in motoring and cycling, and to ensure exceptional service for our customers, we decided to partner with Kriya, specialists in B2B payments and lending decisions.” Stuart Zissman, Head of Financial Services
The B2B vision
Halfords partnered with Kriya to transform their B2B offering. By integrating Kriya PayLater with their Trade Card, the retailer is combining trade discounts for B2B buyers with the ability to pay on account for online and in-store orders.
Adopting an eCommerce-first model has a number of advantages. Firstly, providing online buyers with highly-demanded payment terms expands the businesses they can sell to. Secondly, much of their offline business can be shifted to a self-serve, online checkout. Not only does this provide a smoother buyer experience, it also frees up the Halfords team to focus on the customers where their expertise has the most impact.
The near-infinite scalability of the Kriya solution means Halfords can not only improve their overall B2B customer proposition and experience, but they can also see financial benefits through the partnership too.
“Offering trade credit through payments makes it much slicker. It’s something buyers are familiar with from the consumer world.”Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
Wholesale change
Halfords have kicked off their payments transformation with their wholesale offering.
Business buyers come to the Halfords wholesale team to place bulk orders and request custom details, such as branded bikes and accessories. Before Kriya, this fully offline sales channel required multiple teams and processes to transact each order. This process led to delays and hampered conversion, such as inventory becoming unavailable during the order, or customers purchasing elsewhere.
By streamlining the entire wholesale workflow into Kriya Merchant Portal, Halfords now have a single, automated flow for processing orders.
Wholesale buyers are first onboarded into Merchant Portal. This screens for credit and fraud risk, directly providing their sales team an instant spending limit decision for the buyer. Orders can then be placed on payment terms and invoices are automatically generated for the buyer. Additionally, Kriya assists with credit control by managing payment collections too.
“We needed a way forward that was less hands-on because the whole process was very, very manual.” Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
How it works
1
The buyer places a wholesale order with Halfords
2
Halfords onboard the buyer into Kriya’s Merchant Portal
3
Payment terms selected and purchase complete. The buyer pays at the end of the following month.
Partnering for growth
Reflecting on the journey so far with Kriya, Zissman says “It’s that personal touch and relationship that makes the difference to the product we’re building together.” For Zissman, it's not simply outsourcing the expertise to a third party. “It’s more like we’re onboarding Kriya into Halfords and by extension they’ve become part of our team”.
There’s a busy roadmap ahead for Halfords and Kriya, with plans to bring the whole multichannel offering to market by the autumn of 2024.
We're very excited about this development,” says Millan. “Introducing payment terms to our Trade offering eliminates barriers that previously slowed us down and unlocks opportunities with a vast number of businesses we haven't historically engaged with.”
Flexible finance solutions to boost your growth
To learn more about our payments and digital trade credit solutions book a call with us today.
"Offering credit in-house is just not scalable. We need a partner who allows us to scale, who does that as their bread and butter business."
Hussain Hilli
CEO and Co-Founder
|
Skrap
Challenge
Customers want credit terms, but the marketplace needs money up front to ensure that suppliers get paid timely
Solution
Kriya Payments offering credit to their customers so that they can pay in 30 days or at the end of month following
How Skrap is building a new future for construction with integrated payments
Skrap, a leading construction tech marketplace, is reshaping the industry by connecting builders to the services they need, faster. Adding on Kriya Payments' embedded credit solution has enabled the business to accelerate their growth, offering a novel way for construction companies to access equipment and materials efficiently, with flexible payment terms.
In a short time, the partnership has yielded:
£3 million worth of Skrap payments Skrap processes.
30% monthly repeat rate on Kriya products among buyers
Kriya delivering 40% of all checkout payments
Bringing the digital marketplace to construction
Founded in 2017, Skrap identified the need for a streamlined, digital approach in the construction sector. Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, along with his team, set out to tackle the challenges posed by a fragmented and complex industry.
These issues had become clear to Hilli and his co-founder when working in the industry themselves. Each site required different credit accounts with various suppliers, leading to inconsistent pricing and service quality on equipment. This created endless complexities in sourcing materials and equipment, with varying degrees of reliability and cost-effectiveness across suppliers.
Hilli aimed to create a single, trustworthy source for equipment and services, but this also meant solving the payment habits of an industry that was slow to change.
A scalable approach to credit
In an industry characterised by high-value, sporadic purchases, Skrap faced a significant challenge: their customers desired credit terms, but the marketplace required upfront payments to ensure timely compensation for suppliers. This gap created a critical need for a reliable and scalable credit solution.
In comparison to consumer-facing marketplaces, B2B marketplaces run on credit, from 30-60 days depending on suppliers.
The building industry is traditionally run on trust.. So in order to win the confidence of this segment, Skrap needed to be able to match the personalised, flexible service that customers would expect from a personal relationship.
As a marketplace this presented a challenge – sacrificing their cash flow for their customers.
“There’s a risk in relying on your own working capital, your own cash balance, so we needed some form of financing partnership to scale. Because even if we have millions in the bank, it still means that we're spending it all on facilitating their transactions and on our own operating costs.” - Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, Skrap
The power of digital trade credit with Kriya
Kriya Payments emerged as the perfect partner for Skrap, offering an embedded finance solution that catered to the unique demands of the B2B construction marketplace.
With Kriya’s innovative B2B PayLater solution , Skrap was able to provide their customers with flexible payment terms, while ensuring immediate payment to suppliers, thus bridging the gap between customer needs and operational requirements.
Using Kriya’s open API, Skrap were offering Kriya payments on their marketplace website within three days.
At purchase, credit checks and spending limits are set within seconds using Kriya’s instant decisioning, enabling their buyers to transact immediately upon receiving an approval.
At checkout, the customer can choose a ‘pay later’ button which executes the payment to the supplier, while scheduling the credit for the customer for their chosen payment term.
"Offering credit in-house is just not scalable. We need a partner who allows us to scale, who does that as their bread and butter business." - Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, Skrap
Building solid foundations with the future
Integrating with Kriya has enabled Skrap to create a stable, flexible financial model to enable their customers' purchases while protecting their balance sheet.
Kriya has processed nearly £3 million worth of payments to Skrap.
30% of buyers now use Kriya every month
Kriya now processes a substantial 40% share of all checkout payments
This partnership also enabled Skrap to focus expansion by offering the best service possible to both buyers and sellers on their platform, quickly adding and offering trade credit without the risk of creating their own solution.
Since the integration of Kriya’s financial solutions, Skrap has experienced significant growth across the UK.
The flexibility offered by Kriya’s credit products has made Skrap’s platform more valuable to customers, leading to increased loyalty and business growth. This partnership has not only empowered Skrap to manage its finances more efficiently but has also enhanced its reputation as a tech-forward customer-centric marketplace in the fast-moving, volatile construction industry.
“Kriya is key for our customers to be able to have the freedom to grow and expand without having to open a new credit account at every site. We’re a one-stop-shop where they can do everything in one place.” - Hussain Hilli, CEO and Co-Founder, Skrap
Looking Ahead with Skrap and Kriya
As B2B industries face increased pressure to match the service and convenience of B2C marketplaces and digital experiences, we expect to see increasing demand for integrated credit solutions at checkout.
For businesses such as Skrap who are bringing much needed change to legacy industries, working with digital trade credit and payments solutions such as Kriya can help them bring their customers on the journey with less friction and superior service to drive meaningful transformation and sustainable growth.
Hear more from Hussain and our CEO, Anil
Our CEO and Co-founder, Anil Stocker, sat down with Hussain Hilli, CEO and co-founder of Skrap, to talk about the business and how Kriya is helping them scale. Watch the video below.
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