Challenge

Facile.it was founded in 2008 as an online service to help customers compare prices on insurance policies. Since then, the company has expanded its price comparison service to utilities, financial products, mortgages, and loans. It also operates more than 70 physical stores around Italy where customers can purchase insurance policies in person from an agent.

To support its business model, Facile.it assembled a complex payments infrastructure that relied on multiple providers. But as the company grew, the limitations of that system threatened Facile.it’s ability to deliver a modern payment experience.

For example, adding new online payment methods took three to six months. That lengthy process made it difficult to meet customer demand for alternatives to credit cards such as bank transfers and digital wallets, which in turn prevented Facile.it from improving its conversion rates. Limited options from its in-person payment vendor also meant Facile.it couldn’t offer customers’ preferred payment methods in physical stores.

Unlike typical comparison platforms that redirect customers to partner websites to complete purchases, Facile.it processes payments for insurance products directly, then transfers funds to insurer partners by issuing virtual cards. However, the company had separate providers for payment acceptance and card issuance, which made it difficult to track where individual transactions came from and resolve issues when payments failed.

Faced with these challenges, Facile.it decided it was time to migrate to a unified system from a single provider. “It was very difficult to manage the complexity of payments and continue the growth of our business,” said Roberto Verzeni, head of commercial relations for insurance at Facile.it. “We wanted a modern payment partner so we could externalize and outsource that complexity.”

Solution

In 2024, Facile.it decided to migrate its payments infrastructure to Stripe. The company selected Stripe because it offered a full range of payments and embedded finance products to address the company’s current and future needs, along with an easy developer experience.

To ensure the migration proceeded smoothly, Facile.it engaged Stripe professional services for implementation support. During weekly project meetings, a dedicated Stripe professional services team provided guidance and answered questions. When challenges arose between scheduled meetings, professional services responded quickly, allowing the project to proceed without delay.

Facile.it implemented Stripe Payments and Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite to modernize its checkout experience and maximize conversions with minimal developer effort. The suite includes Stripe Elements, prebuilt UI components for creating custom, optimized checkouts.

The engineering team implemented Stripe’s Payment Element, which let them offer multiple payment methods through a single integration, including credit and debit cards, digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, PayPal, and bank transfers. The Payment Element also provided the flexibility to add new payment methods, such as buy now, pay later or one-click payments. With dynamic payment methods and AI capabilities, the suite positioned Facile.it to continue enhancing the checkout experience as customer preferences evolve.

To improve the in-person payment experience, Facile.it selected Stripe Terminal, a hardware and software solution that lets businesses accept payments in person and consolidates online and in-person transaction data on a unified platform. The company replaced outdated devices that could only accept credit cards with BBPOS WisePOS E card readers, which can accept contactless payments and payment via digital wallets.

Facile.it chose Stripe Issuing, Stripe’s card issuance infrastructure provider, to quickly and easily issue virtual cards to insurer partners in the same infrastructure used for payment acceptance. With Stripe handling both acquiring and issuing, Facile.it gained a unified view of the entire payment flow—from customer payment to partner fulfillment—making it easier to quickly identify and resolve issues with specific transactions.

To improve payment insights, Facile.it implemented Stripe Sigma, allowing internal teams to write custom queries and generate reports on payment data. The team is now implementing Stripe Data Pipeline to integrate Stripe data into its BigQuery data warehouse. This will produce consolidated, accurate, and timely reporting and improve workflows related to revenue recognition, refund management, and cost monitoring.

Results

Facile.it increases conversion rate by 10%

By implementing the Optimized Checkout Suite, Facile.it simplified the checkout process and offered customers’ preferred payment methods, leading to a 10% increase in the conversion rate. Facile.it estimates that adding new payment methods such as buy now, pay later options will further increase the conversion rate by an additional 5%–10%.

Facile.it accelerates implementation and saves engineering resources

Facile.it estimates that it sped up the migration timeline by 15% by engaging Stripe professional services to support and guide its engineering team during the implementation process.

Further, migrating from a cumbersome multiprovider system to unified modern infrastructure has enabled Facile.it to redirect engineering resources to other priorities. “The team working on payments is now smaller,” said Verzeni. “When we’re envisioning new projects with our partners, we know we can leverage Stripe’s product lineup.”

Adding new payment methods takes 80% less time

With the Optimized Checkout Suite, Facile.it can now add new payment methods in 80% less time than the legacy system required. “Now, the main difficulty is not configuring the new payment method, it’s configuring the test on our side,” said Verzeni.

Facile.it is preparing to implement buy now, pay later services through Scalapay and Klarna, as well as Link, a wallet by Stripe that lets customers check out faster by automatically filling in payment details. “Checking out with one click is definitely better than having to add new card details,” said Verzeni. “Everything that reduces effort for the customer is impactful.”

In-store customers have more options to pay with their preferred methods

Facile.it has recently embarked on a new strategy that focuses on improving the in-store experience and supporting insurer partners who sell policies with Facile.it exclusively. Stripe Terminal supports that strategy by enabling stores and insurers to minimize friction with customers by accepting payments in the methods they prefer to use. “It’s about giving our network more options to convert the customer,” Verzeni explained.

Facile.it gains flexible, granular insight into payment data with Stripe Sigma

Thanks to Stripe’s granular data and Stripe Sigma’s reporting and analysis tools, internal teams now benefit from deeper and more actionable insights into payment data. For example, allocating costs and revenue to specific business channels was difficult with the previous system. With Stripe data linked to Facile.it’s policy database, business unit managers now have visibility into the real costs of each channel so they can make more effective decisions about how to invest in them.