Challenge

Today’s vehicles are more advanced than ever, requiring specialised tools and equipment to maintain them. Some tools may have limited or infrequent usage, increasing costs for repair shops and the likelihood that equipment sits idle or is discarded. Toyota devised a new platform, Mechacomi, to help repair shops buy and sell this equipment to and from each other, creating a more sustainable solution. But Toyota needed a payments solution to enable trustworthy transactions across a multi-sided marketplace for high-value equipment and allow the platform to scale into new markets.

Solution

To remove payment friction between repair shops that are likely unfamiliar with each other and hesitant to make large transactions, Toyota selected Stripe Connect to facilitate payments for purchases, deposits, and escrow services. Buyers and sellers get the flexibility to make secure transactions via credit cards or bank transfers, and Toyota gets to extend the life of this expensive equipment. Stripe Connect also lets Toyota scale its platform to 135+ currencies and dozens of popular payment methods while Stripe handles payments Know Your Customer (KYC).

Results

Using Stripe Connect, Toyota quickly enabled payments for escrow services and seller deposits and allowed options for bank transfer and credit card payments. Repair shops get peace of mind when purchasing capital-intensive equipment, and Toyota moves closer to its sustainability and business-transformation goals.

“Our team set a goal of having the service live in six months, (and) colleagues around me said, ‘I’ve never heard of such a fast development time at Toyota,’” Tomoaki Nakatani, creator of Toyota Mechacomi, said. “We hope our Mechacomi platform will become a total service that supports Toyota’s transformation into a mobility company, and using Stripe is the best way to do that.”