Cloud Processor Powerhouse Enfuce and E-commerce Disruptor Starcart Revolutionise Online Shopping with Embedded Payments

e-Payments
15.02.2023 09:30 am

Enfuce, the European card issuing and processing powerhouse, has been selected by disruptive Finnish e-commerce aggregator start-up Starcart to offer its retailers and shoppers the speed, security and convenience of embedded virtual card payments. The partnership is set to transform the way in which consumers shop online, by combining Enfuce’s stand-out embedded payments strengths with Starcart’s unique business model that sets it apart from marketplaces and other e-commerce platforms.

With a mission to make online shopping as hassle-free as possible, Starcart, which was founded in 2021 in Finland, uses automated search and bots to gather more than 12 million items into a catalogue that customers can easily use to buy what they want, in one place. Starcart customers can quickly find and buy the products they want from many different stores with one shopping cart and one payment, making online shopping easier, cheaper, and faster.

Leveraging Enfuce’s turnkey Card as a Service (CaaS), which gives companies the ability to launch payment card programmes and embedded payments solutions, Starcart can now make online shopping speedy and as simple as possible for its users, with secure virtual cards which Starcart can issue to purchase items from online stores on its platform.

With so many online stores across Europe, finding good deals or hard-to-find items is time-consuming and costly for consumers, and can require multiple purchases from several different online sellers. High item prices and shipping fees can also deter customers from completing purchases, meaning online sellers suffer from high rates of basket abandonment.

By working with Enfuce, Starcart is able to generate benefits for its online sellers, who can now level the playing field with competitors and get sales from customers they wouldn’t normally reach. Additionally, with secure virtual card payments enabled by Enfuce, Starcart’s retailers benefit from guaranteed settlement and payment and more checkout conversions. The end-user benefits from being able to purchase items from several online stores within one checkout experience and with the best prices.

Starcart’s partnership with Enfuce has been live in Finland since spring 2022, with sales skyrocketing throughout the year. Just eight months since launch, Starcart is now serving tens of thousands of customers with sales volume growth rates exceeding 20% per month, a figure that is all the more impressive given that e-commerce is a cyclical business where volumes tend to drop after holiday and peak sales seasons.

Pasi Ilola, Founder and CEO at Starcart, comments: “Starcart wants to take the pain away from online shopping. We don't want people to waste their time opening endless browser tabs or spending hours looking for things that they need. What Starcart is doing is unique in the market, and offering a service that has not existed in the market before brings a whole host of technical, legal and operational challenges. Monika Liikamaa, Enfuce’s Co-founder and Co-CEO, was one of the first people I spoke to when I first had the idea for the company. Monika’s deep expertise in payments, and Enfuce’s stellar reputation in empowering clients with CaaS and digital wallet capabilities meant they were my first choice of partner.

“Enfuce have been a very friendly partner to us, and they have solved all the technical and legal challenges we were faced with as a completely new kind of business. It’s been amazing to see how quickly they’ve enabled us to get up and running with card payments and to see how our service is meeting a real need in the market. Enfuce’s capabilities have enabled us to enjoy consistent growth and offer our customers even more choice and convenience.”

Monika Liikamaa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Enfuce, says: “Together Enfuce and Starcart have created an industry first with this new compelling proposition. Starcart is unique in the market, with its aggregator concept of automatically searching stores, selecting items and using bots to complete purchases, making online shopping faster and more frictionless than previously recorded. Combined with Enfuce’s agile embedded payments functionality and the intuitive design of our Card-as-a-Service (CaaS) built to anticipate and meet users’ needs, Starcart can add value and give a much more enjoyable purchase experience to its customers in as few clicks as possible.

“To assist a company like Starcart in extending e-commerce services and payment capabilities requires intricate knowledge of payment technology, the legal and compliance requirements of PSD2, and overcoming the challenges of integration with existing systems. That’s what Enfuce excels at, and we’re excited to play a part in Starcart’s growth journey.”

Denise Johansson, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Enfuce, says: “We’re absolutely delighted that we’ve helped a fellow Finnish pioneer to achieve so much success in such a short space of time. We have been and are there to support Starcart to create a seamless and smooth user experience. Payment often is the least fun part of online shopping, but together we are making it as slick and as smooth as possible. Our partnership is a fantastic example of how Enfuce does the heavy lifting of card issuing and processing, empowering businesses to focus on their core operations with the reassurance of a trusted compliant partner helping them in their quests to drive growth and customer loyalty.”

The tie-up with Starcart is the latest milestone in Enfuce’s successful growth journey, following its €45 million in Series C funding that was secured from Vitruvian Partners, a global investment firm which supports ambitious, high-growth companies. Enfuce is using the funding to kickstart its expansion across Europe in 2023, as it swiftly becomes the go-to partner for card issuance and embedded payments services in the B2B and B2C spaces.

Established in 2016 in Finland, and already the trusted number one issuer processor for more than 35 partners, Enfuce can launch CaaS for businesses in unrivalled accelerated times ahead of the typical onboarding timeframe of six months from other providers.

Key applications for Enfuce’s services include expense management, neobanks and fuel retailers, as well as providing corporate and consumer lending and customisable spending controls. To date, Enfuce has supported 16 million cardholders and processed more than €1 billion in transaction value annually.

Being the first financial service provider in the world to be PCI-DSS certified while running its service in the public cloud, Enfuce is a uniquely scalable payments processor that is lighting the way for the mobile revolution in payments. Several prestigious award wins over the past year are testament to Enfuce’s technology that supports debit, credit, prepaid, gift, fleet and fuel card programmes in any form – plastic, digital and/or tokenised – for consumer, commercial and B2B applications, along with digital wallets.