Challenge

Lynk & Co was looking for a new payment provider to ensure it was in compliance with the EU’s Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and improve its payment experience. By prioritizing an uncomplicated payment experience, Lynk & Co could more effectively convert its riders and drivers.

Lynk & Co's business structure has four separate models: monthly subscriptions, a car-sharing marketplace, large one-time car purchases, and services sales—all requiring payments of various sizes and frequencies. As a result, Lynk & Co wanted a partner that could balance payments easily across its ecosystem while meeting compliance requirements.

Solution

After a rigorous RFP process to evaluate payment providers, Lynk & Co decided Stripe was the best equipped to support its growth ambitions. Lynk & Co turned to Stripe professional services to guide and accelerate a complex integration with their payments and implementation expertise. The teams partnered for a seven-month implementation engagement to integrate Stripe to power Lynk & Co’s PSD2-compliant payments platform.

Hassle-free payments with Stripe Connect

A key tenet of Lynk & Co’s business model is to make access to a car effortless, including a seamless payment experience for drivers and lenders alike. Working closely with Stripe professional services, the teams implemented Stripe Connect, which enables platforms and marketplaces to process payments and pay out to sellers and service providers.

With Stripe Connect, Lynk & Co could enhance its signature car-sharing offering by providing fast and easy onboarding for car sharers to sign up, add bank details, and begin sharing their cars immediately. Car sharers can easily track their transactions and leverage the data provided by Stripe. With the Know Your Customer (KYC) verification handled by Stripe, the process moves faster than before, which has helped Lynk & Co increase its growth.

Architecting for PSD2 compliance with Stripe expertise and guidance

Driving towards a PSD2 compliance deadline, Stripe professional services got involved early in technical discussions, offering Lynk & Co several options designed to meet the PSD2 compliance deadline. Stripe’s professional services team created an implementation guide to align 50+ stakeholders across three of Lynk & Co’s teams to help drive the project's overall direction and keep the project on track.

Stripe professional services provided guidance and expertise throughout the implementation to ensure the overall architecture was built with payments best practices at its core. With the aggressive PSD2 compliance deadline, professional services helped prioritize the most critical features for the launch of an optimized, compliant payment experience, and advised on which features Lynk & Co could safely defer for post-launch.

In preparation for launch, the teams built a custom migration flow to work within Lynk & Co’s existing ecosystem to migrate customers and card details, enabling customers to continue using the platform seamlessly without the need to re-register.

Results

Lynk & Co’s car-sharing offering was launched across all seven of its active markets in a single day. In the six months since launch, Lynk & Co has seen significant growth across its platform with increases in car borrowers, car sharers, and bookings in its signature car-sharing marketplace.

Partnering with Stripe has increased the visibility of Lynk & Co’s payments offering across the organization. Teams can access and interact directly with Stripe, using the Stripe Dashboard to unlock clear visibility into their customer and driver accounts to simplify operational processes.