Challenge
In the past few years, consumer habits have changed and businesses of all sizes have had to double down on their ecommerce operations. Woo wanted to help its merchants adapt quickly through its own integrated payments solutions. Woo already had a longtime partnership with Stripe for core payment processing capabilities, but realized it could further leverage Stripe to empower its merchants to accept in-person payments, offer local payment methods, create recurring payments, facilitate subscriptions, deposit settled funds quickly, and access business financing.
“The ecommerce boom meant businesses needed more than just payments, and they needed that help fast,” said Britni McCotter, VP of Payment Business Operations at Woo. “We saw this as an opportunity to deliver an amazing experience so that merchants could build their businesses the way they wanted to.”
Solution
Woo set out to expand its platform offering to match the rapidly evolving needs of its merchants. To do this, it decided to launch a brand new platform, WooPayments, by integrating several different Stripe products—including Connect, Instant Payouts, Terminal, and Billing. WooPayments allows merchants to do everything from taking contactless payments and accessing funds in real time to tapping into business funding to keep operations afloat.
Woo worked with Stripe to communicate these new capabilities to its customers and prospects, leveraging Stripe’s co-marketing resources to deliver messaging quickly and clearly.
“Having worked with Stripe for years, we knew the platform provided a simple way for us to build a world-class experience and would help us develop a stronger relationship with our merchants,” said McCotter. “WooPayments is our holistic solution that uses Stripe infrastructure to give businesses everything from payments to dispute resolution in one place.”
Results
In just three months and with a team of fewer than 20 people, the company partnered with Stripe to launch WooPayments in 17 countries—from Canada to New Zealand and across Europe.
Rapid time-to-market for a new payments solution
Using a wide range of Stripe products, Woo was able to quickly build and launch an integrated payments solution that provided businesses with the tools they needed to thrive during a global pandemic, and for future success. This expanded financial platform helps Woo capture a greater share of wallet for increased customer retention and allows its merchants to adapt to evolving customer expectations and habits.
“Stripe enabled us to get WooPayments to market fast. In three months, we were live in 17 additional countries. The fact that we were able to support merchants in so many markets that quickly is huge. As an open-source platform, it’s often difficult to build a direct connection with our merchants, but WooPayments gives us a way to develop those relationships.” said McCotter.
Bundling Stripe products to create a platform for continued growth
Woo looked to Stripe for more than just payments. It wanted to build a financial platform to serve businesses, no matter what the future holds. The options available from Stripe’s broad and complementary product suite have enabled Woo to add more value and bundle capabilities together to give merchants access to new ecommerce opportunities.
As Brent Shepherd, Woo Payments Lead, explains, “Building on Stripe, we started with payments, billing, and subscriptions. But we’re quickly adding Stripe Terminal for in-person payments, and planning to offer a full suite of fintech services to help our merchants grow their business, including access to capital, and more—not only in the US, but also Europe and other regions where WooCommerce thrives. We chose Stripe as its extensive options across payments and financial services are what enable us to do this, and do it rapidly without compromise.”
Partnering with Stripe for fast, effective marketing
Using the assets in Stripe’s marketing toolkits, Woo executed announcement campaigns across its owned, earned, and paid channels, highlighting the ability for merchants to collect payments, manage recurring revenue, and track cash flow directly from their WooCommerce dashboard.
“With anything related to Woo and Stripe, our approach to marketing is ‘all channels go,’” said Clara Lee, VP, Product and Operations at Woo. “Stripe helps us position the different features and understand which channels are more advantageous, and it’s been inspiring to see the response from the market.”
Building on Stripe, we started with payments, billing, and subscriptions. But we’re quickly adding Stripe Terminal for in-person payments, and planning to offer a full suite of fintech services to help our merchants grow their business, including access to capital and more—not only in the US, but also Europe and other regions where Woo thrives. We chose Stripe as its extensive options across payments and financial services are what enable us to do this, and do it rapidly without compromise.