COVID carnage: Limepay raises $6m to help merchants take control of BNPL
Enterprise payments fintech, Limepay, has closed an oversubscribed $6 million round to launch Australia’s first merchant-branded platform that seamlessly integrates online payments and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) functionality to provide a native and frictionless customer experience.
As COVID-19 ravages the retail sector and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities, the Limepay solution aims to end the carnage to margins and customer loyalty caused by third-party payments solutions, while giving merchants much-needed control back over their customer relationships, data, and fees.
The lifeline this gives to merchants couldn’t be more timely, according to Founder & CEO, Tim Dwyer.
“We should probably thank the likes of Afterpay for educating the market on new and different payment options that both merchants and consumers value,” said Mr. Dwyer.
“But as the entire economy suffers massive losses, it’s now time for merchants to reclaim profit and customer relationships with an in-house solution. Many of the world’s greatest brands may not even realise they’ve outsourced their customer loyalty to a third-party payments platform that has no loyalty to them. This customer loyalty should now return to the brands that customers have loved for years.
“The issue with outsourced BNPL providers is that they sign up millions of merchant’s customers and take ownership of those relationships. They can then hold merchants to ransom by increasing fees and remarketing competing products. This is an unsustainable model for many merchants, and is somewhat similar to what the market has experienced with Uber Eats, for example. This perhaps initially seemed like a good way to bring in new customers but ultimately led to significant pain for many restaurateurs, with margin erosion and decreasing customer loyalty to the restaurant-brand.
Australia’s retail industry was already suffering from a slew of liquidations before COVID-19 due to mounting pressure from online competition, with this pressure expected to remain after COVID-19.
Due to its ability to address this issue, Limepay has already built native integrations with Adobe’s Magento and WooCommerce platforms, with more on the way – and has millions of dollars a year transacting through its pipes. It boasts a sales pipeline comprising over 1,200 SMBs and 200 enterprise merchants across high street and eCommerce retail groups, hospitality, real estate, health and wellness, travel, and advertising – with a few of the larger Enterprise opportunities reflecting transaction value in the billions.
The oversubscribed round originally targeted $5 million and comprised influential sophisticated investors such as Michael Issenberg (Regional CEO at Accor APAC), Louise Daley (Deputy CEO at Accor APAC), Lambert Kiang (Head of Strategy at Deputy), and Michael Ebeid (Group Executive at Telstra).
Limepay’s advisory board and leadership team also include former senior executives from Afterpay, Zip Co, CBA, Google, Macquarie Bank, PayPal, Equifax, and PwC.
