Challenge

GlossGenius enables over 100,000 entrepreneurs to run their businesses with a suite of easy, intuitive, and powerful business, marketing, and payments solutions. “Running a small business can be challenging when your back office is scattered across a bunch of point solutions and you have little time left to focus on what you really love doing,” said Danielle Cohen-Shohet, Founder and CEO of GlossGenius. “We’re helping our businesses make more money by consolidating all of those systems, helping them understand where they need to go, and giving them more insights and control to realize their entrepreneurial dreams.” And for many of these small businesses, access to capital is a critical path to growth. From managing cash flow, buying beauty and wellness supplies, or expanding into new spaces, GlossGenius is at the center of their user’s growth through Stripe Capital.

GlossGenius chose Stripe Connect as an easy-to-deploy payments platform. The company’s full-featured offering helped GlossGenius become one of the top software products in the industry, earning trust and recognition as one of the best platforms with awards like Beauty Launchpad’s top readers’ choice for salon software and Tearsheet’s Power of Payments Best Payment App. As the company became one of the fastest-growing solutions for service entrepreneurs, it looked to add even more capabilities for its customers. One of its top priorities was to give merchants more ways to personalize their businesses with easy customizations and flexible payments options.

Solution

GlossGenius chose Stripe Connect as an easy-to-deploy payments platform. GlossGenius knew Stripe’s ease-of-use and configuration capabilities would help its payments needs. As it used Stripe Connect to integrate payments into its solutions, merchants could focus on growing their businesses while Stripe handled Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. GlossGenius also utilized Stripe Billing to easily bill its subscription customers and Stripe Terminal to build customized in-person checkout experiences and offer merchants more ways to accept payments.

For even more flexibility, GlossGenius also used Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe Terminal SDK so merchants can accept contactless in-person payments with only an iPhone. It’s an easy way to accept payments across the salon space without maintaining traditional payments hardware.

For even more flexibility, GlossGenius used Stripe’s Payment Element to enable Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna—three buy now, pay later payment methods that allow business owners to offer more choice and payment flexibility for their clients. The company used Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe Terminal SDK so merchants can accept contactless in-person payments with only an iPhone. It’s an easy way to accept payments across the salon space without maintaining traditional payments hardware.

“Stripe’s configuration capabilities let us build infrastructure our way while giving merchants the power to do things their way,” added Cohen-Shohet.

Results

Stripe’s powerful and flexible payments products provide the scale and configuration necessary for GlossGenius—and its customers—to continue their rapid pace of growth.
GlossGenius is helping more than 100,000 local service businesses earn more with less busywork, utilizing industry-leading payments, scheduling, and client care technology. GlossGenius processes over 4 billion in annual transaction activity in partnership with Stripe. Cohen-Shohet said: “We’re providing infrastructure for small businesses to facilitate payments with their own clients, but we’re also looking for a more holistic offering across payments and subscriptions. It’s all available for us on Stripe and that was really important.”

Driving revenue with buy now, pay later

With the Payment Element, GlossGenius launched buy now, pay later payment methods Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna, offering clients payment flexibility and choice. To help drive awareness, GlossGenius sent businesses across the US window decals highlighting BNPL availability. These in-store materials drove a 5.72% lift in payment volume, with BNPL options bringing in a 171% lift in average order value over cards.

“Adding buy now, pay later options like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna allows our customers to drive consistently higher revenue, and gives clients the flexibility they need to purchase larger services”, says Catherine Belay, Head of Payments at GlossGenius. “Making sure our customers knew how to educate and market BNPL to their clients was the extra step that increased their average order values by 3x.”

GlossGenius saw that Stripe shared its long-term vision to bring more financial options to small business owners. Seeing the potential value of additional integrated financial services gave GlossGenius further confidence in its relationship with Stripe. Cohen-Shohet said: “The future of financial services always starts with the end customers and we have a great opportunity to enable more small business success with the team at Stripe.”