SlimPay‘s co-founder and CEO Jérôme Traisnel announced last week the opening of a new office in San Fransisco, becoming the latest FrenchTech startup to land in Silicon Valley.
The move follows a new partnership with Zuora, an American leader in online subscription plan management for enterprises. The idea is for the two companies to offer a complete and integrated solution for recurring payments to American companies with a business model based on online subscriptions.
While Zuora offers software that allows companies to manage the whole process of managing subscriptions, SlimPay will handle the recurring payments.
Overall, more and more companies and consumers are moving away from single purchases of digital goods and toward subscription plans. This creates an opportunity, but also a headache as companies and their customers alike must manage a growing number of such plans.
SlimPlay likes to highlight the fact that also allows customers to pay for their subscriptions directly from their bank accounts, eliminating the need to use credit cards. In a recent study conducted by Elabe for SlimPay, 40 percent of European customers have already switched to direct-debit from their bank accounts to simplify their recurring payments. Another 25 percent said that they’re ready to do it soon.
Traisnel will be speaking at Rude Baguette’s upcoming SPEND Paris, a conference examining the future of finance on April 28th. Traisnel will be appearing with at the event along with Philippe Gelis (CEO & Co-Founder at Kantox), Pierre Lion-Bessa (VP Sales at Mangopay), Olivier Goy (CEO & Founder at Lendix).
In advance of his appearance, we asked Traisnel a few questions:
RB: Why should customers and enterprises switch to direct debit?
Traisnel: Direct debit overcomes issues associated with other payment methods such as expiration dates, payment limits, theft or loss of bank card, etc, and so reduces churn and increases customer lifetime value. In addition, direct debit strongly protects consumers; banks guarantee an immediate money back guarantee in the rare event of a Direct Debit payment error. Furthermore, for several years now, the advent of subscription and the sharing economy has completely transformed the way we consume. For many goods, used both episodically and daily, we now prefer to rent rather than buy, and direct debit is the ideal payment match for this trend.
RB: What is the biggest challenge scaling SlimPay? And what are the challenges to come?
Traisnel: The payment industry is one of the last sectors to be disrupted by the tech wave, mainly due to the industry’s strict regulations. However, this is changing now, especially with the arrival of PSD2, and huge potential can be unlocked from the market. One of the future challenges will be showing banks that FinTechs are not their enemies and that we can work together to provide innovative services to customers.
RB: What is the future of spending/payments?
Traisnel: Customer experience: The payment step of the customer journey will become even more essential as customers seek a seamless, safe and secure payment experience.
The financial landscape is just at the beginning of its transformation, being shaped by innovative and game-changing startups day after day. For SPEND, we lined up speakers from San Francisco, London, Berlin and, of course, Paris. Explore the future of finance at SPEND Paris on April 28, sponsored by BNP Paribas, and join more than 500 professionals at the core of finance and technology convergence.