Rakuten France Partners With Fintech Disruptor, Storfund

Rakuten, one of the world’s largest marketplaces, and fintech innovator Storfund, are joining forces to offer immediate payments for sales to Rakuten France’s sellers.

One of the oldest ecommerce businesses, Rakuten has long been at the forefront of retail digitization. It created the world’s first B2B2C marketplace in 1997 and since then has provided innovative services, technologies and human support to help sellers grow their business online. Partnership with Storfund means Rakuten France will add cash flow to its toolkit of embedded services for sellers.

London-based Storfund launched in 2018 after identifying an ecommerce pain point: marketplaces delay payment to sellers to facilitate refunds, but this leaves sellers without cash to restock, a particular problem in the last quarter of the year when sales can increase by 40%. Storfund, the only European provider of this service, has grown rapidly in the last four years, expanding its presence to 20 countries and doubling the funding it provides each year. This new partnership will see Storfund open its service to Rakuten France’s large base of more than 8500 professional sellers. Demand for Storfund’s service has intensified in response to the recent economic pressures.

“The surges in ecommerce sales over the past few years have shown that sellers can be making huge profits and still have an empty bank account due to payment delays,” said Chief Revenue Officer, Oliver Whelan. “Now economic headwinds have intensified, the need for reliable cash flow has increased.”

Partnership with Rakuten France gives Storfund unrivalled reach in the ecommerce seller community, and cements its position as the leader in this space; tens of thousands of sellers globally are now able to access its service across multiple marketplaces.

Storfund’s Head of Partnerships, Margaret-Anne Galvin, said “Storfund and Rakuten share the same values. Rakuten advocates a virtuous e-commerce model that benefits everyone, sellers of all sizes and all consumers. Similarly, Storfund has a mantra of “win-win ecommerce” by providing cash flow to help sellers grow, marketplaces grow too.”

Storfund’s tech can be integrated quickly and easily by new partners. It already has relationships with Amazon, Back Market, Cdiscount, Fyndiq, PcComponentes and Unilae and a strong pipeline of new marketplace partnerships means more announcements are expected before the end of the year.