How to offer finance to B2B marketplace customers

As you scale your marketplace, you’ll eventually reach a point where you’re held back by the fact that your suppliers cannot sell more because they aren’t paid fast enough, or buyers don’t have liquidity to buy when they’re ready.

Large invoices, tight cash cycles, and economic uncertainty can cause buyers to delay orders, increase payment terms or abandon orders altogether. If you’re a marketplace, this impacts suppliers as longer payment terms means less cash flow and therefore makes it harder to grow and sell more. You see the opportunity to close that gap with finance solutions, but you’re not a bank. Where do you begin?

Financing either with your own funds isn’t always realistic. It can strain cash flow and expose you to the risk of late or missed payments.

The good news is that you can offer financing whether you want to help suppliers get paid faster or let buyers pay later without risking your cash reserves. It’s about picking the right approach. How do you find a solution that fits your business model, protects your cash flow, and grows with you?

In this article, we break down:

4 ways marketplaces can offer financing to customers
Why work with Aria to offer finance to your customers?
How Job&Talent went from 20 factoring partners to one solution with Aria

Note: interested in offering financing to your B2B customers as a marketplace or software company? Learn how Aria can help you by booking a demo.

4 ways marketplaces can offer financing to customers

Financing is more complex for B2B marketplaces. After all, you’re dealing with two parties – suppliers and buyers – with very different payment cultures.

Suppliers want to be paid as soon as possible, while major buyers want to delay their payment as much as possible, usually demanding the standard 30- to 90-day payment terms. Push too hard on either side, and someone walks.

As a marketplace, you’re left in the middle, often sacrificing your own cash reserves to keep both parties happy. With so much time and money spent on ensuring everyone gets paid, growth can stall. Offering financing to customers can relieve much of that burden and free up resources – here are four options to consider:

1. Credit cards: simple and fast, but unpopular with corporations

As mentioned, allowing buyers to use credit cards on your marketplace is a straightforward way to let customers finance their purchases. Your suppliers get paid immediately, while the buyer pays the credit card company over time. In some regions, businesses may use a deferred credit card, where the buyer has 30 days to pay. Disputes or defaults are handled by the card issuer.

When does this option make sense? Credit cards work well for small purchases, like office supplies or everyday services. However, most large corporations don’t use them for major purchases. If your marketplace only accepts credit cards, you could push away potential buyers.

2. BNPL: buyer-centric and can get expensive

BNPL works by financing the buyer as soon as they place an order. That means suppliers are tied to the buyer’s decision. If the buyer doesn’t choose the BNPL option and sticks with their standard 30- to 90-day terms, the supplier will have to wait. If the payment is late, your marketplace may need to cover the payment to keep the supplier happy.

When does this option make sense? Buyer-centric businesses, like product retailers or marketplaces that primarily cater to one side of the transaction, can benefit from BNPL. That’s why retailers and in-store transactions typically see better results than B2B platforms.

BNPL is also better for smaller transaction volumes since costs can stack up quickly. This is because providers tend to charge higher fees or limit approvals to offset the high risk of disputes over fraudulent activity, defective products, or non-delivery.

3. Factoring: a reliable option with complex tradeoffs

Factoring involves a company selling or assigning its invoices to a third party – called a factor – so it can receive cash upfront rather than waiting for payment. This can be arranged via a bank subsidiary, the company’s own bank, or a specialised financing firm.

The factor may sit between the supplier and the marketplace, or the marketplace and the buyer. The arrangement can be confidential or transparent, and you might even have different agreements with different clients.

Factoring usually requires all existing and future receivables to be assigned, though only partial cash advances are provided. Banks and traditional financing firms typically finance large amounts for only a handful of companies, since their verification process is manual and time-consuming.

When does this option make sense? Factoring is preferred by corporations over credit cards. It’s also more affordable on a large scale than BNPL. You have the flexibility to structure different payment plans or setups for different clients, whether that’s paying a particular supplier early or letting a buyer pay late. However, banks are only interested in supporting factoring for large amounts, typically £50M+.

4. Embedded invoice financing: simpler and built for scale

Embedded invoice financing is similar to factoring, with a third-party finance provider handling either payment advances to suppliers, deferred payment for buyers, or both.

However, unlike traditional factoring, the solution is integrated directly into the marketplace. Suppliers and buyers can easily opt in and onboard without leaving the platform. Processing occurs behind the scenes, making for a smoother customer experience.

When does this option make sense? Embedded invoice financing is great for marketplaces and other businesses with complex supplier-buyer relationships. Rather than dealing with multiple factoring partners, you work with one provider that handles payments. Because it’s integrated right into your marketplace, more clients can take advantage of financing, and the solution can grow with you as you scale.

Why work with Aria to offer finance to your customers?

Most financing tools focus on buyers, but marketplaces also need to support liquidity for suppliers.

Aria is an embedded invoicing financing platform for B2B platforms that supports both buyers and suppliers. Based in the EU, we support 65+ live clients with embedded invoice financing, including large marketplaces like Malt and Job&Talent. Aria integrates via API into your existing platform, letting you keep your current workflows and create a payment experience that’s perfect for you.

Here are a few reasons our customers pick Aria to finance their B2B customers.

Increase transaction volume with instant payments for suppliers and extended payment terms for buyers

Most marketplaces are stuck in a constant balancing act: your suppliers want to be paid as soon as possible, while your buyers expect 30-90 days to pay. Financing can help, but there’s only so much cash you can allocate and traditional financing partners only approve a small subset of your customers.

Aria removes that tension. We give you the freedom to offer instant payouts for suppliers and extended payment terms for buyers – without tying up your capital or limiting who can access finance products. You finance the supplier, and the buyer then pays you based on agreed payment terms (usually 30 – 90 days).

How it works in practice depends on your model. There are two kind of marketplaces:

Intermediary: the seller invoices the marketplace, the marketplace invoices the customer with a markup. In this case, it is a direct factoring model and Aria finances the marketplace.
Platform: the marketplace invoices the customer on behalf of the supplier. Aria finances the supplier directly.

Through an API integration, you embed invoice financing and allow suppliers to choose which invoices they want to finance.

When a supplier sends their invoice to the marketplace, the buyer will be asked to validate, often with a simple click of a button in the platform or via email. Once the invoice is validated, suppliers get the option to get paid instantly with invoice financing, with Aria advancing up to 100% of the invoice value.

Once we’ve accepted the financing request, we purchase the invoice outright. That means the buyer now owes us, and we take responsibility if issues arise. If there’s a dispute over the invoice, the marketplace resolves it but since the terms and conditions are comprehensive, Aria is usually able to handle the collection process with emails and phone calls. Aria also has a professional recovery process if necessary. In any case, we cover the risk and the supplier gets paid.

This allows you to:

Pay suppliers the same day as an invoice is validated.
Protect your marketplace when a buyer defaults.
Build loyalty with suppliers through transparent, dependable payment terms.

On the buyer side, they can pay following agreed payment terms – 30, 60, or even 90 days – allowing them to easily manage their cash flow and use regular invoicing and payment flows.

This lets you:

Ease the pressure on your buyers’ cash flow.
Save time and stress by having Aria handle repayments from buyers.
Increase sales transaction volume and overall sales, thanks to flexible payment options and a smoother experience for everyone involved.

When suppliers get paid faster, they can reinvest immediately, accept more orders, and increase their sales. It also means that they are more likely to be loyal to your marketplace, than a different one where payments take weeks.

Aria lets you serve both sides, so your marketplace keeps sellers loyal, buyers happy, and transaction volume growing.

Enjoy greater peace of mind with Aria managing risk and payment collection

You want to offer financing to as many customers as possible, but you also need to protect your platform from bad actors. Verifying buyers and suppliers, analysing risk, and preventing fraud is critical, but often expensive, manual and slow. Aria has automated the process.

Our risk scoring capabilities give you the tools and insights you need to minimise fraud and payment risk. With Aria, dozens of checks that would normally take days – debtor solvency, KYC/KYB across 100+ countries, fraud detection, invoice validation – are completed automatically, with 92% of applicants receiving instant decisions.

That level of automation allows you to offer financing to more customers as you can more easily determine which ones are the genuine customers. In fact, we’ve been able to offer close to 99% acceptance for corporations and 90% for SMEs.

With the technology we’ve developed, we only need a company registration ID to determine financing limits and advance funds. We’ll typically approve a verified company for an initial amount, for example €100k, and fund multiple invoices up to that limit. Additional transactions can then get funded as outstanding invoices are repaid.

We also proactively guard against payment issues. Our system automatically notifies users about payments with smart, timely (and friendly) triggers. If a buyer fails to pay on time, we step in to manage collections and cover losses. We’ll handle recovery with tact and humanity, so your relationships with users stay strong, and your team can focus on growth.

Altogether, it’s a system that works; our default rate currently stands at just 0.1%.

Scale effortlessly with custom integrations that fit your workflow

Bringing in a third-party to handle payment can be tricky. You don’t want to disrupt existing workflows, introduce extra steps for your customers, or complicate your team’s operations. Not to mention, the new solution can hinder rather than support your growth if it can’t evolve with you.

Aria is built to fit right into your workflow. Our flexible REST APIs let you tailor the experience to your system and brand. Self-service onboarding flows and white-labeled interfaces mean your customers can get financing without leaving the platform. This removes friction that might otherwise discourage sign-ups.

To improve the customer experience even further, buyers are provided with a single International Bank Account Number (IBAN), regardless of where they operate. This reduces errors while speeding up the processing for international transactions.

Our APIs also automate all of your payment flows. Choose when to trigger payments after invoices are received, define payment terms, and redirect payments anywhere. With one integration, you can process B2B payments across 100+ countries. We handle the rails – SEPA, SCT, SWIFT, FPS – and other complexities of international payment infrastructure.

All of this adds up to a smoother payment experience for your customers. When payments are simpler and financing is accessible, suppliers stay loyal and overall volume increases. And as you grow, Aria scales right alongside you, supporting more users and your global expansion.

How Job&Talent went from 20 factoring partners to 1 with Aria

Job&Talent is an AI-powered workforce platform that matches skilled professionals and companies in essential industries. The two parties are connected by the platform, which is built to handle everything from hiring and shift scheduling to payroll and compliance.

In 2024 alone, Job&Talent placed 300,000 people in work and handled €1.8 billion in transactions. With such scale, “late payment culture” became a real challenge. Workers wanted immediate funds, while the companies wanted to pay later. This left an average 45-day window where Job&Talent had to cover payments “out-of-pocket.”

Before Aria, the company was forced to juggle 20 different factoring partners. To effectively manage growth across multiple countries and currencies, they needed a simpler and reliable solution.

Aria’s embedded invoice financing provided exactly that through its integration with NetSuite, which enabled automatic invoice transfers, with funds arriving in less than 24 hours. Tasks that previously required three people and hours of manual work could now be handled by one person in a third of the time.

The partnership was highly collaborative, with Job&Talent highlighting Aria’s flexibility and responsiveness. By adapting to the company’s specific needs, Aria made global financing easier, faster, and less resource-intensive. This lets Job&Talent focus on growth rather than payment headaches.

The future of financing is embedded, automated, and buyer-supplier friendly

Suppliers want cash immediately, while buyers need to comply with internal treasury policies and standard payment cycles. Traditional financing often helps one side but adds cost, complexity, or limits scalability.

Embedded invoice financing helps keep all parties happy. Suppliers get paid fast, buyers can use regular payment terms, and you avoid cash flow strain. Aria integrates directly into your workflow with flexible APIs, which makes it simple to set up and easy to scale. We also handle collections and defaults, absorbing the financial and operational risk of financing.

With Aria, every user gets a smooth payment experience from application process through repayment. See how we can help you offer financing to your customers by requesting a demo today.