Challenge

More than 30 years ago, MYOB was one of the original startups. It provided accounting and bookkeeping software before reinventing itself as a cloud-based business, serving the unique needs of small- and medium-sized businesses – as well as their accountants and bookkeepers – in Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to its technological transition to the cloud, MYOB transformed its business model. Building on its time-tested accounting software, the company expanded its offerings to become a flexible business management platform – helping its customers manage key workflows such as finance and project management, supply chain, customer relationship management (CRM), and more. As part of that expansion, MYOB built a payment system that allowed businesses in Australia to receive online payments from customers with the click of a button. But the system took significant resources to build and maintain and would have been cumbersome to scale outside of Australia.

MYOB wanted to expand online invoice payments to its New Zealand customers, to help alleviate delays in collecting the revenue they needed to reinvest in their own businesses. “Cash flow management consistently comes out as the number one challenge a small business faces,” said Steve Price, head of product at MYOB. “Anything that helps them get paid faster is hugely beneficial.”

For a speedy implementation, MYOB wanted a payment solution that could integrate easily with the company’s business management platform and preserve its existing workflows. The company also wanted to provide faster onboarding for its customers, and receive assistance managing compliance and operational issues related to accepting payments in a new geographic location.

Solution

MYOB chose Stripe Connect to meet its rapid timeline for launching online payments in New Zealand. What set Connect apart from other options was its ease of integration, as well as the pre-built components and comprehensive onboarding and technical support provided by Stripe.

Stripe APIs made it seamless to integrate Connect with MYOB’s existing software platform. MYOB also used Connect’s embedded components to quickly build a native, white-labelled payment experience without having to create new financial workflows. For example, MYOB added an embedded payment button directly to the invoices it already generated for customers in New Zealand. That button links to a Stripe payment landing page and accepts credit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

MYOB used Stripe embedded onboarding to accelerate customer onboarding for the new payment service. With embedded onboarding, MYOB simply added a button to its platform that took customers directly into the Stripe onboarding flow to collect and verify customer identification and bank account information needed for payouts – removing the need for MYOB to develop its own onboarding process. Stripe-managed risk provided up-front screening for compliance and regulatory checks such as Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening, as well as ongoing credit and fraud risk monitoring.

“We were able to add embedded components into existing workflows and use onboarding to effectively plug and play where we had gaps in our platform experience,” said Price. “This allowed us to go live much faster and keep our engineers focused on other tasks.”

MYOB further optimised its engineering team’s time through its partnership with Thoughtworks, a services partner in the Stripe Partner Ecosystem. MYOB regularly uses Thoughtworks developers to augment its team when implementing technology projects.

As the integration progressed, MYOB turned to Stripe professional services to assist with the launch of the new system.

Results

Two months to roll out online payments

The ease of integrating Connect and the support offered by Stripe meant MYOB had its New Zealand payments offering available in eight weeks.

Speedy onboarding for MYOB customers

Using the optimised onboarding flow from Stripe now allows MYOB customers in New Zealand to complete the process and begin accepting payments in under an hour, compared with the two to four days it can take customers to complete onboarding in Australia. “The Stripe customer onboarding process is seamless and quick, so we’re getting more customers converted and registered,” said Price.

Ongoing support for payment-related compliance and risk management

Choosing Stripe-managed risk saved MYOB several steps in the process of offering online payments in New Zealand. Stripe is registered on the New Zealand Financial Service Providers Register and is responsible for reporting related to the country’s Anti-Money Laundering/Countering Financing of Terrorism Act. Stripe also assumes liability for merchant fraud and handles chargebacks, which meant MYOB didn’t have to scale up a team of in-house risk analysts.

MYOB customers get paid 3x faster with online payments

Already, New Zealand customers who use MYOB’s online payments are enjoying the benefits of much faster revenue collection. That’s good for customers, but it’s also good for MYOB’s long-term prospects.

“Integrated online payments, and the faster payment times they afford, is enormously beneficial for our customers,” said Price. “This then leads to higher customer satisfaction and lower attrition.”

Going forward, Price said his team is analysing these payments to focus on optimising the service. And beyond signing up more small- to medium-sized customers, MYOB is considering potential offerings for other customer segments, such as larger enterprises that don’t currently have an online invoice payment feature on the MYOB platform.