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Farmlend unlock remarkable growth with Kriya payments and digital trade credit to power their B2B marketplace.
Goal
Region
Worldwide
Industry
Agriculture
The Challenge
Scaling a global agricultural market place while providing credit in a range of regions, terms and short timeframes for growers and suppliers.
The Solution
Kriya Payments offers instant capital to growers anywhere, enabling rapid expansion of Farmlend and reducing operational complexity.
How Farmlend is planting the seeds of a new agricultural model with embedded payments
Farmlend is growing something special. With their online marketplace, Farmlend aims to streamline the agricultural industry by connecting growers with distributors and retailers on a global scale. In building their platform, Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder of Farmlend, is looking to address the fundamental challenges of seasonality in agriculture, enabling year-round produce sourcing and building trust in a fragmented market.
In a world where weather patterns, seasonal demand and complex supply chains can impact cash flow for suppliers and distributors, financial flexibility is key. Since integrating Kriya Payments, Farmlend has experienced remarkable growth and enhanced its operational efficiency, empowering suppliers with immediate payments and buyers with flexible credit terms.
In a relatively short period, this collaboration has resulted in:
A 25% increase in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) due to liquidity provided by Kriya
33% growth in supplier acquisition rate, as faster, up-front payment differentiated their marketplace.
Connecting a global network of growers
Founded in London, Farmlend began as a tool to provide micro-loans to small and medium-sized agricultural businesses in Lebanon, Abdel Wahab's home country, during the economic crisis.
From these roots, Farmlend has developed into a B2B Marketplace taking the unique challenge of seasonality. “In this industry, buyers don't stick with one supplier year-round. They chase the season across hemispheres," explains Abdel Wahab. This transient nature of business relationships in agriculture needed a reliable intermediary to connect stakeholders. However, this also required a financial foundation that would ensure small and medium producers could manage their cash flow in the face of the buying power of distributors.
"Agriculture is not only the biggest employer of the working class globally but also faces the tightest cash cycles.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
Solving the credit problem across borders
Farmlend's partnership with Kriya was an essential step in addressing the cash flow challenges inherent in the agricultural sector. However, the demands of the business were significant, requiring a partner that could go beyond the antiquated methods of traditional finance providers, making quick decisions in line with the tight timescales dictated by fresh produce and harvests.
Traditionally, producers have had the least power in this arrangement, often having to wait not just the extended transit time for their goods to be delivered, but also the extensive payment terms of the buyer – often up to 60 days – to get paid.
While Farmlend considered building their own financial infrastructure, the global nature of their business, with networks stretching from Southern Europe through North Africa, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, meant dealing with a huge range of regulation, APIs and customer needs.
Kriya's flexible PayLater solutions enabled Farmlend to streamline these complexities, offering a lifeline to suppliers anywhere, many of whom previously faced major operational and financial challenges.
“As a business you need to focus on the thing you’re really good at. The financing piece is absolutely critical to us but it's not the core specialty that we need to build. With Kriya, we can distribute that ability to get paid now and give buyers payment terms that suit them.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
Digital Trade Credit: A Catalyst for Farmlend's Growth
Working with Kriya, Farmlend has processed a substantial volume of transactions through Kriya, significantly boosting the efficiency of its marketplace. The instant credit decisioning feature of Kriya has been particularly impactful, allowing buyers to make immediate purchases with the confidence of structured payment terms.
Since integrating Kriya's Payments product in March 2023, Farmlend has achieved a 25% increase in GMV, fueled by Kriya's liquidity offerings for buyers .
The rate of supplier acquisition has accelerated by 33%. Thanks to up-front liquidity from Kriya, they’re able to pay suppliers much faster than others in the market, which is a big competitive differentiator.
“Our suppliers know when they ship products, someone's going to treat them fairly and pay them on time. And our distributors know they’re working with a reliable counterparty and that when they place orders they’ll be the right quality.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
Impacts and Future Prospects
As Farmlend continues its global growth, adding new regions and suppliers, peace of mind and financial equity remain top of mind, with Abdel Wahab specifically aiming to improve the lot of producers world wide. Kriya’s global infrastructure enables seamless new market entry, enabling Farmlend to offer the best service from day one, creating enhanced trust and retention and, ultimately, a better world for growers.
“Something I really love about the Kriya relationship is that it feels like a partnership rather than a service provider who's selling you something.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
“We expect our B2B revenues to double as a result of providing Kriya’s flexible payment terms to our trade and business buyers.” Stuart Zissman, Head of Financial Services
Halfords is the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling services and products. Its customers shop across over 1,750 fixed and mobile locations including, Halfords stores and garages, as well as its website, halfords.com.
Today, around a quarter of Halfords turnover is business-to-business. They sell to organisations of all sizes including SME businesses, garages, and workshops, offering discounts on automotive parts and tools with their Trade Card, as well as directly to larger commercial and government customers that buy in bulk.
However, like many well-established enterprises, Halfords found its future growth was challenged by the legacy processes of its past. Find out how they’ve teamed up with Kriya to remove the friction from their B2B commerce.
Halford's challenges
“The exam question” says Halfords’ Head of Financial Services, Stuart Zissman, “was how do we make selling to business and trade buyers less labour-intensive?” Having already overseen a successful consumer finance proposition at Halfords, it was clear to Zissman that their B2B offering had potential to grow by introducing a simple and effective credit solution.
1. B2B buyers expect payments terms
“All successful B2B propositions have some sort of financial support” Zissman explains. Whether large or small, Halfords’ business buyers want to be invoiced on payment terms. This is especially beneficial for garages and workshops, which thrive on efficient working capital cycles, allowing them to source parts upfront and defer payment until they have received compensation for their services.
Halfords recognised the opportunity to enhance their offerings by providing scalable trade credit, which was previously untapped. As Zissman says, "offering payments completes the circle."
2. Manual, unscalable processes were holding back growth
Halfords' hands-on approach to B2B processes presented an opportunity for greater scalability and growth. Wholesale orders, managed via account managers, involved manual quotes and purchase orders, which added complexity.
“We’d like to say yes to every single customer that wants to order from us,” says Head of Trade Card, Chris Millan. However, processing these detailed orders for existing buyers took time, limiting the retailer's ability to proactively attract new business and expand their account base.
What Halfords sought was a way to make their B2B offering more accessible and achieve a better economy of scale.
“We work with sole traders, business customers and government entities. Kriya is the only supplier that could support all three.” Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
The search for a solution
Recognising the need for change, Halfords set out to find a way to modernise its B2B offering. With Kriya's 12-year track record and willingness to collaborate on a solution for their unique requirements struck a chord with Halfords.
A solution for all B2B buyers
Halfords has a diverse buyer base and needed B2B payment terms that could be offered to limited companies, government entities and sole traders.
Multichannel
With trade customers already purchasing online and in-store, Halfords needed a solution to offer payment terms holistically across their sales channels.
Risk expertise
With their focus on Motoring and Cycling, Halfords sought a partner with strong expertise in finance and payments, including robust credit and fraud detection capabilities, to help onboard their buyers.
“We are experts in motoring and cycling, and to ensure exceptional service for our customers, we decided to partner with Kriya, specialists in B2B payments and lending decisions.” Stuart Zissman, Head of Financial Services
The B2B vision
Halfords partnered with Kriya to transform their B2B offering. By integrating Kriya PayLater with their Trade Card, the retailer is combining trade discounts for B2B buyers with the ability to pay on account for online and in-store orders.
Adopting an eCommerce-first model has a number of advantages. Firstly, providing online buyers with highly-demanded payment terms expands the businesses they can sell to. Secondly, much of their offline business can be shifted to a self-serve, online checkout. Not only does this provide a smoother buyer experience, it also frees up the Halfords team to focus on the customers where their expertise has the most impact.
The near-infinite scalability of the Kriya solution means Halfords can not only improve their overall B2B customer proposition and experience, but they can also see financial benefits through the partnership too.
“Offering trade credit through payments makes it much slicker. It’s something buyers are familiar with from the consumer world.”Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
Wholesale change
Halfords have kicked off their payments transformation with their wholesale offering.
Business buyers come to the Halfords wholesale team to place bulk orders and request custom details, such as branded bikes and accessories. Before Kriya, this fully offline sales channel required multiple teams and processes to transact each order. This process led to delays and hampered conversion, such as inventory becoming unavailable during the order, or customers purchasing elsewhere.
By streamlining the entire wholesale workflow into Kriya Merchant Portal, Halfords now have a single, automated flow for processing orders.
Wholesale buyers are first onboarded into Merchant Portal. This screens for credit and fraud risk, directly providing their sales team an instant spending limit decision for the buyer. Orders can then be placed on payment terms and invoices are automatically generated for the buyer. Additionally, Kriya assists with credit control by managing payment collections too.
“We needed a way forward that was less hands-on because the whole process was very, very manual.” Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
How it works
1
The buyer places a wholesale order with Halfords
2
Halfords onboard the buyer into Kriya’s Merchant Portal
3
Payment terms selected and purchase complete. The buyer pays at the end of the following month.
Partnering for growth
Reflecting on the journey so far with Kriya, Zissman says “It’s that personal touch and relationship that makes the difference to the product we’re building together.” For Zissman, it's not simply outsourcing the expertise to a third party. “It’s more like we’re onboarding Kriya into Halfords and by extension they’ve become part of our team”.
There’s a busy roadmap ahead for Halfords and Kriya, with plans to bring the whole multichannel offering to market by the autumn of 2024.
We're very excited about this development,” says Millan. “Introducing payment terms to our Trade offering eliminates barriers that previously slowed us down and unlocks opportunities with a vast number of businesses we haven't historically engaged with.”
B2B Payments to boost your growth
To learn more about our payments and digital trade credit solutions book a call with us today.
“Something I really love about the Kriya relationship is that it feels like a partnership rather than a service provider who's selling you something.”
Abdel Wahab Turkmani
CEO & Founder
|
Farmlend
Challenge
Scaling a global agricultural market place while providing credit in a range of regions, terms and short timeframes for growers and suppliers.
Solution
Kriya Payments offers instant capital to growers anywhere, enabling rapid expansion of Farmlend and reducing operational complexity.
How Farmlend is planting the seeds of a new agricultural model with embedded payments
Farmlend is growing something special. With their online marketplace, Farmlend aims to streamline the agricultural industry by connecting growers with distributors and retailers on a global scale. In building their platform, Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder of Farmlend, is looking to address the fundamental challenges of seasonality in agriculture, enabling year-round produce sourcing and building trust in a fragmented market.
In a world where weather patterns, seasonal demand and complex supply chains can impact cash flow for suppliers and distributors, financial flexibility is key. Since integrating Kriya Payments, Farmlend has experienced remarkable growth and enhanced its operational efficiency, empowering suppliers with immediate payments and buyers with flexible credit terms.
In a relatively short period, this collaboration has resulted in:
A 25% increase in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) due to liquidity provided by Kriya
33% growth in supplier acquisition rate, as faster, up-front payment differentiated their marketplace.
Connecting a global network of growers
Founded in London, Farmlend began as a tool to provide micro-loans to small and medium-sized agricultural businesses in Lebanon, Abdel Wahab's home country, during the economic crisis.
From these roots, Farmlend has developed into a B2B Marketplace taking the unique challenge of seasonality. “In this industry, buyers don't stick with one supplier year-round. They chase the season across hemispheres," explains Abdel Wahab. This transient nature of business relationships in agriculture needed a reliable intermediary to connect stakeholders. However, this also required a financial foundation that would ensure small and medium producers could manage their cash flow in the face of the buying power of distributors.
"Agriculture is not only the biggest employer of the working class globally but also faces the tightest cash cycles.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
Solving the credit problem across borders
Farmlend's partnership with Kriya was an essential step in addressing the cash flow challenges inherent in the agricultural sector. However, the demands of the business were significant, requiring a partner that could go beyond the antiquated methods of traditional finance providers, making quick decisions in line with the tight timescales dictated by fresh produce and harvests.
Traditionally, producers have had the least power in this arrangement, often having to wait not just the extended transit time for their goods to be delivered, but also the extensive payment terms of the buyer – often up to 60 days – to get paid.
While Farmlend considered building their own financial infrastructure, the global nature of their business, with networks stretching from Southern Europe through North Africa, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, meant dealing with a huge range of regulation, APIs and customer needs.
Kriya's flexible PayLater solutions enabled Farmlend to streamline these complexities, offering a lifeline to suppliers anywhere, many of whom previously faced major operational and financial challenges.
“As a business you need to focus on the thing you’re really good at. The financing piece is absolutely critical to us but it's not the core specialty that we need to build. With Kriya, we can distribute that ability to get paid now and give buyers payment terms that suit them.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
Digital Trade Credit: A Catalyst for Farmlend's Growth
Working with Kriya, Farmlend has processed a substantial volume of transactions through Kriya, significantly boosting the efficiency of its marketplace. The instant credit decisioning feature of Kriya has been particularly impactful, allowing buyers to make immediate purchases with the confidence of structured payment terms.
Since integrating Kriya's Payments product in March 2023, Farmlend has achieved a 25% increase in GMV, fueled by Kriya's liquidity offerings for buyers .
The rate of supplier acquisition has accelerated by 33%. Thanks to up-front liquidity from Kriya, they’re able to pay suppliers much faster than others in the market, which is a big competitive differentiator.
“Our suppliers know when they ship products, someone's going to treat them fairly and pay them on time. And our distributors know they’re working with a reliable counterparty and that when they place orders they’ll be the right quality.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
Impacts and Future Prospects
As Farmlend continues its global growth, adding new regions and suppliers, peace of mind and financial equity remain top of mind, with Abdel Wahab specifically aiming to improve the lot of producers world wide. Kriya’s global infrastructure enables seamless new market entry, enabling Farmlend to offer the best service from day one, creating enhanced trust and retention and, ultimately, a better world for growers.
“Something I really love about the Kriya relationship is that it feels like a partnership rather than a service provider who's selling you something.” - Abdel Wahab Turkmani, CEO & Founder, Farmlend
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