You've probably seen the name Billie floating around if you've done any business shopping in Europe lately. It’s not the razor brand for women—though they share the name—but a Berlin-based powerhouse that is quietly rewriting how companies pay for stuff. Honestly, the B2B world has been stuck in the dark ages for decades. While you could buy a pair of sneakers with two clicks and a "pay later" button on your phone, businesses were still stuck filling out PDF forms and waiting five days for a credit check just to buy a pallet of printer paper.
Billie because we want to simplify this mess is the core of their pitch. They aren’t just another fintech startup; they are the group that looked at the massive gap between consumer ease and corporate clunkiness and decided to bridge it. Led by former Klarna executives and founders who already had a win with Zencap, this team basically took the "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) magic and forced it to work for the complex world of business-to-business transactions.
It sounds simple. It isn't.
The Problem With Traditional B2B Payments
Most people don't realize that B2B commerce is actually three to five times larger than the consumer market. We're talking trillions. Yet, until very recently, the "standard" was still paper invoices and "Net 30" terms that relied on manual trust or ancient credit bureaus.
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If you're a small business selling to a big one, you're often acting as a bank. You ship the goods, and then you sit around for 30, 60, or 90 days waiting for the cash to hit your account. It kills growth. It’s why so many startups fail even when they have plenty of orders—they just run out of cash while waiting for their customers to pay.
Billie stepped in to say: "What if the merchant gets paid immediately, but the buyer still gets their 30 days of breathing room?"
Why Klarna Teamed Up With Them
In 2021, a massive shift happened. Klarna, the undisputed king of consumer BNPL, realized they couldn't just "tweak" their consumer model for businesses. The risk is different. The data is different. So, they partnered with Billie. This gave Billie access to thousands of merchants overnight.
How Billie Actually Works (The No-Fluff Version)
When a business buyer hits a checkout and sees Billie, a lot happens in about 1.5 seconds.
- The Real-Time Check: Instead of a human at a bank looking at a tax return from two years ago, Billie uses machine learning to scrape current data. They look at the company’s registration, current solvency, and even "soft" data points to decide if the buyer is good for the money.
- Instant Approval: The buyer gets approved for a limit—sometimes up to €100,000—right there in the browser. No paperwork.
- The Payout: The seller (the merchant) gets their money almost instantly. Billie takes the "default risk." If the buyer disappears into the night and never pays, that’s Billie’s problem, not the seller's.
- The Terms: The buyer pays Billie back later. Usually in 30 days, though they’ve experimented with longer windows and even "Pay in 3" models for businesses.
It's a "win-win-win," which is a phrase I usually hate, but here it actually fits. The merchant sells more because the buyer isn't worried about this week's payroll. The buyer keeps their cash liquid. Billie takes a small cut of the transaction.
What Most People Get Wrong About B2B BNPL
A common misconception is that this is just "factoring" with a fancy website.
Old-school factoring is aggressive. It’s expensive. Often, the factor takes over your whole sales ledger and starts calling your customers if they’re a day late, which can look "cheap" or desperate to your clients. Billie stays largely in the background. It feels like a modern payment method, not a debt collection agency.
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Also, it isn't just for tiny startups. Large enterprises are using this to manage their procurement because it's faster than their internal accounting departments.
The Data Edge
The "secret sauce" isn't the money; it's the algorithm. Christian Grobe and Matthias Knecht, the founders, spent years at Zencap (which was acquired by Funding Circle) learning exactly how to price risk for SMEs. They know that a company’s LinkedIn presence, its website's age, and its public filing patterns tell a better story than a stagnant credit score.
Real Impact: By the Numbers
Let's look at the actual performance. According to data shared during their partnership rollouts, merchants using Billie often see:
- Conversion rates jump by up to 40%. Why? Because "Buy Now, Pay Later" removes the immediate "sticker shock" for a business owner.
- Average Order Value (AOV) increases because buyers feel comfortable ordering the "premium" version of a product when they know the cash isn't leaving their pocket for another month.
- Operational costs drop by about 25% because you don't need a "Collections" person chasing down late invoices for half the day.
Is It Safe?
Risk is the big elephant in the room. In 2026, with interest rates being more volatile than they were in the "free money" era of 2020, B2B lending is tricky. Billie manages this by being incredibly picky about their merchant partners. They don't just work with anyone. They integrate with big platforms like Shopify, Stripe, and Adyen to ensure the data flow is clean.
They also have "Buyer Protection." If a business buys a pallet of laptops and they show up broken, Billie doesn't just force them to pay. They have a resolution process that mirrors the consumer protections we've all grown used to on Amazon.
Moving Forward: Actionable Steps for Your Business
If you’re running a B2B shop or even a small agency, you need to stop thinking about payments as a "utility" and start seeing them as a sales tool.
First, audit your checkout. If your only option is "Bank Transfer" or "Credit Card," you are losing sales. Many corporate cards have low limits, and bank transfers are a manual pain for the buyer's accountant.
Second, look at the integration. You don't need to rebuild your site to use Billie. If you're on Stripe or Klarna already, it’s often just a toggle switch in the backend.
Third, test it on high-ticket items. See if your customers gravitate toward the 30-day terms. Often, you'll find that your "slow" months start to level out because people aren't waiting for their own quarterly bonuses to buy what they need from you.
The reality is that billie because we want to change the status quo is succeeding because the old way was simply too slow for a digital economy. Businesses want to move at the speed of the internet, and waiting 14 days for a credit limit to be increased is a relic of the 90s.
Check your current payment provider's documentation to see if Billie is available in your region. Most of Europe—specifically Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands—is already well-covered. If you're selling into those markets, adding this could be the easiest growth lever you pull this year.
Make sure your "Terms and Conditions" are updated to reflect that you’re assigning claims to a third party. It’s a standard legal step, but one you shouldn't skip. Once that’s done, you’re basically out of the debt-collection business and back into the selling business.
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Next Steps to Implement B2B BNPL:
- Log into your payment gateway (Stripe, Adyen, or Mollie).
- Search for "Billie" or "B2B Buy Now Pay Later" in the payment methods settings.
- Review the transaction fees—they are usually slightly higher than credit cards but lower than the cost of a missed sale.
- Enable the method for your B2B customer segment and monitor your Average Order Value for 30 days.