Credit Key Raises $33M Towards BNPL Services

Credit Key, which works in payments and lending, has raised $33.85 million towards its buy now, pay later (BNPL) model, a report says.

The company raised the newest funds from Greycroft, Bonfire Ventures and Loeb.nyc, alongside other, unnamed investors.

Credit Key offers businesses an alternative payment solution intended to give financing for purchases at the point of sale. The company takes on the credit risk and loan servicing, offering buyers a “transparent” experience with competitive interest rates, the report writes.

The booming B2B market in the U.S. consists of over $9 trillion in payments annually. While only $1.3 trillion of that takes place online, that number could grow rapidly in the near future. Credit Key, according to the report, expects the eCommerce market to keep up the pace, too, reaching as much as $1.8 trillion by 2022.

“B2B e-commerce continues to expand at an incredible pace, but a great majority of merchants still lack the payment tools that their customers are asking for,” said John Tomich, co-founder and chief executive of Credit Key, in a statement. “As we equip more and more merchants with our point-of-sale financing option, we continue to see data that points to larger orders, fewer abandoned carts and improved customer acquisition.”

Tomich recently spoke with PYMNTS about the state of B2B payments, which he said were still behind B2C payments by around 10 to 15 years. But he said the shift to eCommerce was changing things, and that the shift would have to accommodate the ways businesses finance things. He said there would have to be a move to “the Amazon experience” of very simple checkouts for B2B purchases, rather than having to go through a catalog and speak with a representative.

Some innovations to that end include streamlining the checkout to let buyers access financing without having to exit the window, thus making it easier and smoother overall to go through with a purchase.