Billhop, Visa Finland and OmaSp to boost working capital for Finnish businesses

By Megha Bhattacharya

Billhop today announced a partnership with Visa Finland and Oma Säästöpankki Oyj (OmaSp)  with an aim to help Finnish businesses to enhance their cash flow and close their liquidity gap. Under the partnership, OmaSp has launched a new Visa business credit card product, thus giving its customers access to benefits and Billhop’s service at a preferential rate.

Riikka Salminen, Country Manager for Visa Finland, Sweden and the Baltics added, “I am pleased to launch our cooperation with Billhop with the help of Oma Säästöpankki. This launch is of a special significance to us, as the new OmaSp Visa Business Credit card is the very first of its kind in Finland.”

OmaSp’s cardholders will now able to improve their working capital by paying their suppliers via Billhop. When paying through Billhop, the actual cash flow effect does not occur until the payment of the card statement is due, thereby significantly strengthening the liquidity cushion of the company.

Billhop’s CEO Sebastian Andreescu said, “The cooperation with OmaSp marks an important step in commercial issuer cooperation. We see the interest for Billhop’s service increase among issuers as they are experiencing significant reduction in overall travel and entertainment volumes as a consequence of Covid-19. The foremost obstacle in the B2B space is low card acceptance and Billhop instantly removes this hurdle and makes all supplier payments card-accessible.”

Recently, the company collaborated with Visa in Ireland intending to enable businesses to pay their suppliers using card services. Visa cardholders, as a part of the partnership, will have a preferential rate of 1.99% with the company( as compared to the headline rate of 2.95%).

The company’s CFO Ingemar Sjögren said, “Billhop’s service will be available to Oma Säästöpankki’s customers at a much lower price, which will help thousands of Finnish companies improve their cash flow and close their liquidity gap. Billhop already has more than 50,000 satisfied customers across Europe.”