Challenge

The founders of refurbed wanted to connect sellers of refurbished goods in Austria and Germany with customers across Europe. They decided to build a marketplace from scratch and needed a payment partner that could seamlessly integrate with the site.

From the beginning, refurbed had further European expansion in mind. That meant its payment infrastructure needed to be simple to scale, including easily onboarding a growing number of sellers and expanding to new countries. The company was looking for a flexible payment architecture that could provide additional support for sellers over time, while also accommodating changing customer preferences and payment technologies.

“We found that the right payment methods were a huge lever to having an offering that customers would be interested in,” said Pádraig Power, go-to-market and product marketing lead at refurbed.

Preventing fraud and maximizing acceptance on legitimate transactions was another priority. To address those challenges, refurbed needed a provider with powerful fraud-prevention tools and expertise in maximizing authorization rates.

Solution

From its 2017 launch, refurbed chose Stripe as its payment provider based on the strength of Stripe’s APIs, which enabled the company to easily integrate payment capabilities into its site without requiring intensive resources from its development team.

refurbed built its marketplace on Stripe Connect, which facilitates the movement of money between buyers, sellers, and the marketplace. The company chose Stripe-hosted onboarding for sellers via refurbed’s Stripe account, as well as identity verification and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. refurbed used Connect’s smart payout engine to send payments to sellers quickly and securely.

Connect integrates seamlessly with Stripe Payments, meaning refurbed could immediately begin accepting online transactions from customers. As it grew, refurbed could quickly roll out new payment methods that appealed to buyers in each market. For instance, when refurbed entered the Danish market in 2022, Payments made it easy for the company to offer MobilePay, one of the most popular digital wallets in Denmark and Finland. In addition to local payment methods such as Swish, a popular payment method in Sweden, and Przelewy24 in Poland, refurbed users also can pay with methods such as Klarna, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

In 2023, refurbed implemented the Express Checkout Element, which lets customers pay through one-click payment methods during any part of the checkout experience. In response to customer demand for buy now, pay later (BNPL) options, in 2024, refurbed added Klarna to the Express Checkout Element, giving buyers a one-click option to make purchases through this increasingly popular payment method. In addition, refurbed customized its Express Checkout Element integration to accept several different one-click payment methods, including Apple Pay and Google Pay.

refurbed also implemented Stripe Radar, which uses AI to identify and prevent fraud in real time. The company has relied on Stripe’s support to prevent fraudulent transactions and allow more legitimate charges to go through.

Results

15 minutes to onboard sellers with Connect

With Connect, refurbed is able to onboard sellers to its marketplace platform in just 15 minutes. During the first 9 months of 2025, refurbed has added more than 65 sellers alone, bringing the total number of refurbishers on its platform to almost 400. “Connect is an integral part of our business,” said Power. “The fact that Stripe vets and verifies sellers on the payment side aids refurbed by reducing our internal resource needs in a stress-free manner.”

New payment methods go live in just 5 working days

refurbed has a dedicated engineering team focused on the checkout process. Stripe has made the process of adding new payment methods easy, which has helped support refurbed’s expansion in European markets where customers prefer specific local payment methods. With Stripe, refurbed can offer a wide range of region-specific payment options such as Revolut Pay, Swish, iDEAL, EPS, MobilePay, and Przelewy24. This flexibility allows customers to pay their way with methods that make sense for their region, further supporting refurbed’s growth across Europe. That ease of integration also has given the team more time to focus on mission-critical issues, such as user experience and A/B testing to increase revenue.

“We continuously optimize and iterate to test new checkout approaches,” said Power. “Stripe gives us a lot of flexibility to do that.”

refurbed sees a 3% uptick in conversion rates after adding Klarna

After giving customers a one-click BNPL checkout option by enabling Klarna on the Express Checkout Element, refurbed has seen conversion rates increase by 3%. Today, roughly a third of all Klarna transactions on refurbed are made through the Express Checkout Element.

2% of suspicious payment attempts blocked

refurbed has created customized fraud prevention rules through Radar that, along with Radar’s AI-powered fraud prevention, have effectively reduced 2% of fraudulent payment attempts. Radar’s adaptive 3D Secure (3DS) controls also provide a powerful layer of authentication for each transaction, giving refurbed additional fraud tools.