Billhop has announced a partnership with Visa Finland and Oma Säästöpankki Oyj (OmaSp) to help Finnish businesses improve their cash flow and close their liquidity gap.
As part of the collaboration, OmaSp has released a new Visa business credit card product, the first of its kind in Finland, giving OmaSp customers access to a variety of benefits, including access to Billhop’s service at a preferential rate when paying with an OmaSp card.
Following the launch of OmaSp’s commercial card, and the first of its kind in Finland, in November 2020, its cardholders are now able to improve their working capital by paying their suppliers via Billhop. When paying through Billhop, the actual cash flow effect does not occur until the payment of the card statement is due, thereby significantly strengthening the liquidity cushion of the company. This has not previously been possible for Finnish businesses and can be especially important in today’s business climate.
This announcement follows Billhop’s collaboration with Visa in Ireland earlier this year and a period of significant growth in the commercial space. In the midst of the pandemic, commercial card issuers have seen a drastic decline in transaction volumes due to the absence of travel and entertainment spend which traditionally make up the bulk of transactions on commercial cards.
Billhop, which has already launched in several European markets, is the payment service which enables businesses and individuals to pay invoices with credit cards regardless if the end beneficiary accepts card payments or not. No onboarding of the end beneficiary is required, allowing Billhop to enable 100% of supplier payments on card instantaneously. In practical terms, this means that Finnish businesses from now on can pay virtually all invoices using their existing credit card.
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Riikka Salminen, Country Manager for Visa Finland, Sweden and the Baltics, is pleased with the long-term cooperation with Billhop. Riikka adds: “I am pleased to launch our cooperation with Billhop with the help of Oma Säästöpankki. This launch is of a special significance to us, as the new OmaSp Visa Business Credit card is the very first of its kind in Finland.”
Billhop’s CEO Sebastian Andreescu said: “The cooperation with OmaSp marks an important step in commercial issuer cooperation. We see the interest for Billhop’s service increase among issuers as they are experiencing significant reduction in overall travel and entertainment volumes as a consequence of Covid-19. The foremost obstacle in the B2B space is low card acceptance and Billhop instantly removes this hurdle and makes all supplier payments card-accessible.”
Billhop’s CFO Ingemar Sjögren is enthusiastic about working with Oma Säästöpankki and launching the product in Finland: “Billhop’s service will be available to Oma Säästöpankki’s customers at a much lower price, which will help thousands of Finnish companies improve their cash flow and close their liquidity gap. Billhop already has more than 50,000 satisfied customers across Europe.”
