Challenge

The traditional model of car ownership typically involves a revolving door of expensive bills, including insurance, maintenance, and repairs. And eventually, the owner has to contend with either replacing their depreciated asset, or dealing with an increasing number of car troubles as the vehicle ages.

In 2019, FINN presented a new model. Through FINN’s platform, drivers can sign up for a new car of their choice, have it delivered to their home, pay a monthly rate, and drive it for six months or a year—no other bills and no further hassle required. FINN’s fee covers the cost of the vehicle, insurance, and ongoing maintenance service. And at the end of the subscription period, drivers can choose to renew and swap their vehicle for a new one.

This frictionless option requires less up-front cost than buying a car, and more flexibility than leasing—and it proved popular. By 2021, FINN was on the verge of major growth, and it knew payments were a key part of the customer experience that it had to get right. Drivers choose FINN specifically because of the ease it offers, and its payment experience needed to reflect that.

“Ultimately payments should be part of our product and we want to make payments as simple for the customer as possible,” said Philipp Wohnhaas, senior principal for strategy and business operations at FINN. “That means the checkout should be super, super simple. That also means that the entirety of payments that happen during a subscription should be super simple.”

At the time, FINN was working with a payment provider that could only support SEPA payments. FINN wanted to replace its existing payment provider with a more robust solution that could support it as it scaled, particularly as it looked to expand globally. But FINN’s tech team was lean and needed an easy-to-implement solution that would enable a fast rollout and make it possible to quickly bring additional features to market in the future.

FINN’s new solution would need to provide reliable support for subscription billing and invoicing, and help the company mitigate involuntary churn. It would also need to enable FINN to grow its payment offerings to appeal to more customers. Finally, FINN sought a payment provider that would also act as a tech partner, helping the company continue to innovate as it scaled.

Solution

FINN selected Stripe as its new payment provider, recognizing that Stripe’s elegant APIs and clear, detailed documentation would enable FINN to launch quickly. The FINN team also appreciated Stripe’s customer-centered culture, which it saw as the foundation for a strong partnership.

“We have a very strong focus on our customers. We really want to solve problems for our customers, and we felt the same at Stripe,” said Wohnhaas. “I really value the way we interact, the way we are heard, the way our problems are ultimately solved.”

FINN integrated Stripe Billing to manage its recurring payments. Several Billing features help businesses recover failed payments and reduce churn. These features include automated failed payment emails; Smart Retries, which uses machine learning to automatically retry failed payments at optimal times; and Stripe’s automatic card updater, which updates saved card information when customers receive new cards.

Alongside Billing, FINN implemented Stripe Invoicing. Invoicing allowed the company to create and send an invoice to customers in minutes, while automating accounting and invoicing workflows—no code required. This capability was important for FINN because in addition to subscription billing, it also needed to be able to collect up-front deposits and a final invoice at the end of a subscription cycle.

To improve its checkout flow and offer a wider range of payment methods, FINN also used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite. The Optimized Checkout Suite includes a set of embeddable UI components through Stripe Elements, access to 100 payment methods—including digital wallets such as Apple Pay and PayPal, which is especially popular in Germany; buy now, pay later options like Klarna; and Link, Stripe’s accelerated checkout solution that autofills customer payment details for a fast, easy checkout experience.

Results

Ease of implementation enables two-person team to launch within two months

Stripe’s no-code solutions helped FINN move quickly when the team integrated its new payment system. FINN completed its initial Stripe integration with a team of two—composed of Fabian Brossok, product manager for payments and risk, and an intern—in eight weeks.

“I’m not an engineer and have no engineering background,” said Brossok. “So that was quite an achievement.”

Subscription billing optimizations help FINN reduce manual workload and churn

With Billing, FINN created a seamless, automated subscription billing experience that provided a great user experience while minimizing manual work for the FINN team by 40%. The optimizations built into Billing, such as Smart Retries, have helped mitigate involuntary churn by 25% in Germany and recover hundreds of thousands of euros in less than one year.

A fast, simple checkout experience with additional payment methods fuels FINN’s growth

The Optimized Checkout Suite enabled FINN to easily integrate a simple, intuitive checkout flow and easily roll out new payment methods, which provided the foundation FINN needed for its next phase of growth. With Elements, FINN was able to add Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, PayPal, and SEPA Direct Debit in Germany—integrating some of the new payment methods in as little as one day. In Germany, 14% of FINN’s transactions are made with PayPal, and FINN has seen a reduction in involuntary churn with digital wallets. These improvements to the customer experience helped FINN as it scaled to process $180 million annually with Stripe.

Stripe’s product roadmap and speed of innovation supports FINN’s expansion

Stripe’s product roadmap, speed of innovation, and openness to collaboration gave FINN confidence in Stripe as a technology partner capable of supporting exponential growth.

“If you’re looking toward expansion, if you’re looking toward other parts of your business, Stripe scales with you,” said Wohnhaas.

FINN continues to work closely with Stripe as it charts its course and is considering implementing additional products, such as Stripe Issuing and Stripe Tax.