Digital customer journey

Completing the purchase is an important part of the digital customer journey. End customers would like to see flexible and convenient payment options for this procedure. With buy now pay later, they can choose whether to pay on account or in instalments. The annual transaction volume in this segment is growing at a double-digit rate in Switzerland, and it is estimated that it will reach CHF 3 to 4 billion by 2025. We are well positioned with our subsidiary Swissbilling, which has many years of experience in this area. Swissbilling has already implemented BNPL solutions for Ochsner Sport, IKEA and other business partners.

Embedded finance trend

Integrating “invoice financing” into online shopping is a growing trend in Scandinavian countries and Germany. In Switzerland, too, most online shoppers decide to pay on account – provided they have the option to do so. For customers, it means convenient, flexible and secure payments with tailored payment options – and for retailers, an omnichannel solution, that enhances their customer experience.

“The Swissbilling product is key to ensuring customer retention for retailers who offer purchasing on account and payment in instalment”, explains Moreno Bottesi, Chief Sales Officer at Swissbilling. “As a local provider, we help our partner retailers to maintain lasting customer relationships. We know the market and the behaviour of Swiss consumers very well. We know exactly what they want and how to serve them.”

“Purchasing on account is a very important and established method of payment in Switzerland. We have been offering this option for a very long time in the Ochsner Sport online shop to meet the needs of our customers. They use purchasing on account much more often than a credit card, Twint or Paypal, for example. From the customer’s perspective, purchasing on account is an attractive service. Products such as shoes and textiles sometimes don’t fit as expected. In that case, it is convenient if customers do not have to make an advance payment. They can order a larger selection and pay afterwards only for the items they actually keep.

As one of Switzerland’s leading sports retailer, we at Ochsner Sport place very high demands on ourselves and on quality for our customers. It was important for us to have a payment service provider for purchasing on account that understands Swiss customers and the dunning system, as well as the dunning culture in Switzerland. We have been with Swissbilling since July 2021 – they are a very good partner that meets our requirements. It is a Swiss company whose call centres are located in Switzerland and it reliably covers the national languages. Swissbilling also demonstrated flexibility and a willingness to adapt processes in the management of accounts receivable to meet our requirements.

We firmly believe that we have entered into a very good partnership with Swissbilling and we are looking forward to the future. This is because we have big plans together: we will soon offer purchasing on account and by instalments in our branches as well. In addition, introduction of the QR code invoice is scheduled for the first quarter of 2022. In the future, we will also place physical invoices into our parcels. Through these innovations, Ochsner Sport aims to make payment processing even simpler for our customers.”