Challenge

After launching in 2018 as a French marketplace for people to discover and register for fitness classes, bsport’s founders quickly identified a bigger opportunity: building studio management software designed for the international market. Studio owners in European countries were hungry for alternatives to existing solutions, which were cumbersome to use and built primarily for US-based studios.

“European studios value vendors who can cater to regional preferences,” said Marc Capelo, CPO of Paris-based bsport. Solutions built for US-based studios weren’t able to handle the large number of compliance requirements, languages, and payment methods across Europe, creating an opportunity for bsport.

Since user experience was a major differentiator for bsport, the company needed a solution that made onboarding seamless for studios. bsport knew that one key need for studios was migrating direct debit mandates (agreements to automatically debit recurring payments such as subscriptions or memberships from a customer’s bank account) from their previous studio management solutions to bsport without requiring customers to re-enter their payment details, which can create an opportunity for churn. And since bsport expected that much of its revenue would come from payment monetization, it wanted to partner with a provider that would continually invest in new features to help drive revenue growth.

Solution

bsport chose to partner with Stripe from the beginning. “We needed something that would be as easy as possible to deploy and maintain,” said Capelo. “Stripe was quite well known, and it was reassuring to go to a provider that is trusted by the industry and the developer community.”

The team implemented Stripe Payments, Stripe’s core payment processing solution, to manage payments across local currencies and accept dozens of payment methods. Stripe Payments enabled studios to accept payments in a wide variety of methods popular in their regions, including credit cards, direct debit, and popular local payment methods, including iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, and Alma’s buy now, pay later service in France.

In addition to providing the payment methods required to succeed in a variety of locations, Stripe Payments supports compliance with important payment regulations and standards, including PCI DSS.

The team used Stripe Connect to embed payments in their platform, giving studios a fully integrated, white-labeled payments offering. Studio owners manage payments within the same software they use to manage the rest of their operations. “To customers, this is just one platform, and they have one point of contact,” said Capelo.

bsport opted to enroll new studios with Stripe-hosted onboarding, which handles the collection of business and identity verification information, including any country-specific requirements. Importantly, Stripe could migrate direct debit mandates without requiring customers to re-enter their banking details.

Studio owners also had the option of using Stripe Terminal, Stripe’s combined hardware and software solution for unifying digital and in-person payments, to accept payments at their studios. In addition to classes and memberships, studios could use Terminal to sell items such as clothing, equipment, food, and drinks. In the future, bsport hopes to explore using Terminal to provide a unified accounting experience for studios, enable them to personalize product recommendations, and increase revenue from in-person payments.

Results

bsport doubles payment volume every year since 2020

With Stripe as its payments partner, bsport successfully capitalized on the opportunity to deliver a solution that appealed to boutique fitness studios around the world. The team trusts payment infrastructure to Stripe, allowing engineers to spend their time building features that have helped the company rapidly grow payment volumes, which have doubled every year since 2020. “Stripe’s API is quite clear,” said Capelo. “Since we didn’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to embed payments in the platform, we could focus on actually shipping functionality that our partners were asking for.”

Today, bsport processes approximately $25 million each month in payment volume.

bsport expands to 20+ countries and 2,500+ fitness studios

Stripe’s support for more than 135 currencies and more than 100 payment methods has helped the bsport team rapidly expand: since launching, the company has entered more than 20 countries, attracting more than 2,500 boutique fitness studios. With international growth at the heart of bsport’s business strategy, providing the payments capabilities studios need to serve their local markets—with little to no work on behalf of bsport’s developers—has been integral. Stripe Payments lets bsport easily adapt to regional preferences, helping studios boost conversion rates by offering clients their preferred payment methods.

Studio owners are onboarded within minutes—no code required

As a newer entrant into the studio management software market, bsport needed to make it easy for studios to migrate away from competitors. Stripe-hosted onboarding lets studios get up and running on Connect in minutes, without requiring the bsport team to write any custom code. Likewise, providing studios with Terminal readers to accept payments at their brick-and-mortar locations takes only a few clicks. With Terminal, studios can offer an omnichannel experience that unifies online and in-person payments, helping them recognize returning members across channels and provide more personalized service.

Studios can switch to bsport without creating churn risk from direct debits

Stripe’s ability to migrate direct debit mandates plays a major role in enabling bsport to attract new studios. “That was really important for us,” said Capelo. “We have had some partners that didn’t want to migrate to bsport if we couldn’t migrate their mandates.”

Stripe supports bsport’s product roadmap and expansion plans

Payments are important to bsport’s short- and long-term growth plans, and the company plans to partner closely with Stripe to offer new products to its studio partners around the world and simplify operations internally.

bsport is now migrating to the Payment Element, Stripe’s next-generation embeddable UI component that combines multiple payment methods into a single integration. Instead of having to build a separate frontend integration for each new payment method, the team can quickly roll out new payment methods, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH.

The team also plans to adopt Stripe Billing, Stripe’s no-code billing software, to replace their home-grown billing solution, which will free bsport engineers to focus on more valuable features for studio owners. bsport is also exploring integrating embedded finance into its platform, including offering financial accounts to studios with Stripe Treasury, offering financing through Stripe Capital, and issuing credit cards to studios with Stripe Issuing.

Learning about and adopting new Stripe products has been easy thanks to trainings and workshops led by Stripe’s Enterprise Paid Support team, which helped bsport understand what capabilities are available and build the business case to adopt them. “At the end of the day, we feel Stripe is here to support us,” said Capelo.