TikTok Shop Turns to Storfund to Improve Seller Cash Flow

TikTok Shop has teamed with Storfund to offer sellers an embedded cash flow solution.

The new offering, dubbed Daily Advance, is the first of its kind in a major U.S. marketplace, according to a Monday (Oct. 7) press release. It will see Storfund — a London-based FinTech providing funding to eCommerce sellers — advance money to merchants as soon as their products ship.

“This addresses a significant disparity in the fast moving world of ecommerce where customers can buy online in minutes, but marketplaces can delay payouts to sellers for up to 60 days,” Storfund said in the release.

“Money is legitimately held back by all marketplaces to ensure that sellers have funds available for refunds but this can disrupt their ability to restock and scale up.”

With this partnership, TikTok will embed Storfun’s solution “end-to-end within its platform, the first major marketplace in the US to do so,” the release added.

The partnership follows a collaboration earlier this year between Storfund and French payment infrastructure provider Mangopay.

TikTok’s eCommerce merchant base in the U.S. has ballooned over the past few years, exceeding 500,000 merchants at the end of 2023. The social media platform has said it sees eCommerce — which it brought to the U.S. last year — as a major revenue driver.

“While your traditional model might be scrolling through a list of products on a web page, we’re aiming to create an experience where it’s something more entertaining and engaging than that,” Mary Hubbard, head of governance and experience for TikTok Shop Americas, told Bloomberg News in April.

“We want people to feel that their shopping experience is tailored and relevant to them, in the same way that they feel their ‘For You Feed’ is. Our focus is making sure the experience is a positive one, whichever way they do it.”

In other eCommerce news, PYMNTS last week explored the importance of payment tokens in securing online transactions.

These tokens are unique digital identifiers that take the place sensitive payment details during sales, making them less valuable to hackers.

“This technology has matured rapidly, allowing merchants to use tokens instead of actual payment information,” PYMNTS wrote. “For instance, when a customer makes a purchase, their payment data — like credit card numbers — is substituted with a token that carries no intrinsic value. This process not only protects the consumer’s card information, but also minimizes the risk of data breaches.”