FreshBooks customers in the United States and Canada can now let clients pay their invoices a little bit at a time.
FreshBooks expanded its partnership with American payments processor Stripe last year to launch its Payments offering.
The Toronto-based financial software company is adding the buy now, pay later (BNPL) feature to its Payments offering through a partnership with San Francisco-based Affirm. When businesses select BNPL as an eligible invoice payment method through Freshbook Payments, their clients can sign up through Affirm to pay through biweekly or monthly plans. Business owners receive the full invoice amount upfront, minus a transaction fee, while the client pays Affirm over a set period.
“By giving their clients a smarter, more flexible way to pay for services, FreshBooks customers can win more jobs, drive customer loyalty, and fuel long-term growth,” FreshBooks head of product Andrew Gunner said in a statement.
Founded in 2004, FreshBooks aims to help small and medium-sized businesses manage finances, billing, payroll, payments, and client engagement through its accounting platform. The company expanded its partnership with American payments processor Stripe last year to launch its Payments offering, which allows businesses to send a Stripe payment link to their clients alongside invoices that are automatically recorded in FreshBooks.
Following a multi-year struggle to reach profitability, FreshBooks casually unveiled a new permanent CEO in March, alongside $125 million USD in debt financing from Morgan Stanley. Shaheen Javadizadeh took the top job from long-time interim leader Mara Reiff, who shifted to COO. FreshBooks told BetaKit that it would use the debt to continue on its current path of driving profitable growth.
Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify renewed and expanded its own exclusivity agreement with Affirm earlier this year to bring its once US-restricted partnership to Canada and beyond. In April, Affirm announced that some Shopify merchants in Canada gained early access to Shop Pay Installments, marking the first time the BNPL product was available outside of the US.
Affirm entered the Canadian market on its own in 2021, when it acquired Canadian BNPL firm PayBright for $340 million CAD.
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Image by Towfiqu barbhuiya.