BigCommerce and Balance Team to Simplify B2B eCommerce

Payments platform Balance and eCommerce platform BigCommerce have teamed to help merchants scale their B2B payments.

Balance announced in a Monday (Jan. 30) press release it has been named a BigCommerce Certified Technology Partner. The partnership will see Balance provide BigCommerce merchants with access to digital and self-serve B2B payments.

“Real commerce is catering to how the buyer wants to pay, each time,” said Balance Head of Partnerships Sean Last in the release. “It’s about making it easy for them to do their procurement, every time. Sometimes that will mean paying via check, other times wire, other times debit, or on net terms. That means looking for more options and ways to enhance the checkout that have not previously existed in B2B eCommerce.”

Balance Co-founder and CEO Bar Geron said in the release that the partnership makes Balance’s digital and automated credit options, payment methods, invoicing, and reconciliation capabilities accessible to any BigCommerce merchant that sells online.

The company said in the release its in-house research showed that a majority of B2B customers said that “slow or lengthy approval for payment terms would be the top reason to change to another eCommerce site,” while many B2B customers said they would abandon their purchases due to friction during checkout.

That puts B2B customers in the same neighborhood as their B2C counterparts, according to research by PYMNTS, which found 91% of shoppers said a satisfying checkout experience is a major factor in determining whether or not they will keep coming back to a merchant.

PYMNTS’ research has also found retailers making moves to offer customers an easier experience. “The Instant Payments Transformation Guide,” a 2023 collaboration with ACI Worldwide, found that 32.5% of retailers are planning to add real-time payment capabilities to their checkout experience in the near future.

Balance’s partnership comes a little less than three weeks after BigCommerce announced it had launched an app that lets U.S. merchants put Amazon’s Buy with Prime on their BigCommerce storefront with no coding needed.

The new app will let BigCommerce merchants target new “high-intent” shoppers and fuel greater conversions, said Sharon Gee, vice president of revenue growth and general manager of omnichannel at BigCommerce.

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