Challenge

La Redoute, a brand deeply ingrained in French culture, was founded in 1837 as a worsted spinning factory in the heart of the wool region of northern France. Over many years and rounds of reinvention, La Redoute grew into a retail giant selling apparel and home goods to millions of customers through a mail-order catalogue.

To maintain its position as a leading European retailer, La Redoute has fully embraced e-commerce, with a website that today reaches 6.2 million unique visitors in more than 20 countries. In 2022, company leaders determined they needed to replace La Redoute’s web of disparate legacy payment systems with a single global solution. The company’s existing tech stack, with different solutions for different countries, was inefficient and burdensome to manage.

In its search for a new solution, La Redoute prioritised finding a payment service provider that could help it accelerate international expansion and facilitate quicker payouts. The company sought to improve customer experience with a simple checkout process and a diverse selection of payment methods.

In modernising its payments technology, La Redoute also needed a payments provider that would help it meet Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), a European regulatory requirement aimed at reducing fraud and making online payments more secure. The company needed comprehensive fraud protection that would block fraud while keeping authorisation rates high.

Finally, La Redoute wanted a single solution that would allow it to easily manage transaction and customer data in one centralised place, reducing work for finance teams tasked with managing data across several siloed systems.

Solution

La Redoute chose Stripe to replace its fragmented payments stack. With Stripe’s comprehensive financial infrastructure, La Redoute was confident it would gain a partner capable of supporting its innovative vision and creating the leading commerce experience that its customers had come to expect.

La Redoute implemented Stripe Payments for global payment processing and Stripe’s optimised checkout suite, which includes the Payment Element and dynamically surfaces the most relevant payment methods for each customer.

With the Payment Element, La Redoute was able to easily add new payment methods without writing any code. The addition of popular payment methods, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Klarna, a buy now, pay later option, allows La Redoute to more easily enter new markets and appeal to a broader customer base, which ultimately increases conversion.

La Redoute enabled Stripe’s accelerated payout schedules with faster payouts, which allows the company next-day access to funds and helps it issue payouts within a day. To improve business operations and finance workflows, La Redoute used Stripe Sigma, which helps teams quickly access and analyse all of their Stripe data.

For global fraud protection, La Redoute used Stripe Radar, a machine-learning powered solution that trains on billions of data points to detect and block fraud automatically. For additional fraud protection and to comply with SCA requirements, La Redoute relies on Payments, which supports 3D Secure as an extra security measure that further reduces fraud while maintaining frictionless payments authorisation.

"We've used Stripe's machine learning-based authentication engine to offer frictionless 3DS and exemption flows,” said Jean-Cédric Costa, chief information officer for La Redoute. “It not only reduces fraud risk but genuinely elevates our customers' shopping experience. With Stripe, we have peace of mind and our customers do, too, creating a winning shopping experience."

La Redoute completed its payment transformation in close collaboration with Stripe professional services, which drove the strategy behind La Redoute’s new customer-centric payment experience and guided the transformation's overall impact throughout the company. The team helped La Redoute navigate implementation challenges to keep its launches on track. For example, the team partnered with Stripe's Payment Element product team to expedite new card brand choice functionality and ensure Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) was in place in time for its UK launch to maintain a seamless customer experience and operational compatibility between La Redoute and Stripe.

La Redoute's partnership with the professional services team began in 2022 to facilitate its payments transformation and continues to grow as La Redoute expands its new payment solutions. "The implementation team was both proactive and responsive, helping us find the best solutions to make the experience smooth and as good as possible, all with smiles on their faces," said Fayçal Ennaifer, business transformation director at La Redoute.

Results

La Redoute adds new payment methods in just a few clicks

The ability to add new payment methods with ease was paramount for La Redoute to win new customers in new markets by providing them with the payment methods they prefer. The optimised checkout suite enabled La Redoute to quickly add new payment methods without draining valuable tech resources on in-house integrations.

“Historically, when we wanted to add a new payment method, it would take six to nine months – just for one country and one payment method,” Costa said. “Now we can do it in just a few clicks without even having to involve the digital experience team because it’s fully seamless in the way we integrate that in our checkout.”

Popular new payment methods drive conversion

La Redoute refined its checkout with new payment methods, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. After only two weeks, the company measured a 2% increase in conversion, which it attributes to these new payment methods.

La Redoute also added PayPal, a payment method that’s especially popular in Germany, Italy, France, and several countries outside of Europe, and a buy now, pay later option that allows customers to pay in instalments.

Faster payouts, easy access to business insights boost efficiency

La Redoute has also seen benefits on the business and finance side. With the addition of faster payouts, the company gained quicker access and more control in managing funds.

“Stripe worked with us to ensure we had flexibility in how we moved funds and enabled next-day payouts directly to our bank account,” Costa said. “By adopting Stripe’s T+1 payouts, we have been able to optimise for interest and move money to end users and partners quicker.”

With Sigma, La Redoute can see all transactions and customer data in a single place, providing a unified view and reducing staff hours previously spent reconciling data across numerous systems.

Fraud protection keeps transactions secure without adding friction at checkout

Radar and support for 3DS have helped La Redoute achieve a secure checkout that automatically detects fraud while also optimising for a smooth checkout experience. La Redoute’s Stripe integration has led to more 3DS exemptions, resulting in frictionless rates above 80% in every country. With Radar and Payments in place, La Redoute’s authorisation rates exceed 98%.