Worldpay and Yabie Team to Boost UK Small Business Payments

Worldpay has launched a partnership with point-of-sale (POS) tech firm Yabie.

The collaboration, announced Tuesday (May 29), will see Yabie help Worldpay power the merchant business tools in Worldpay 360, the company’s new business management and payment solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.K.

“The UK collaboration will help deliver streamlined, user-friendly solutions to independent businesses looking for a payments system that can enhance customer experiences and empower their business,” the companies said in a news release.

In addition, the partnership marks Sweden-based Yabie’s entry into the U.K. after providing POS software to businesses ranging from independent local merchants to major retailers in the Nordic region.

“The UK market represents the perfect launchpad for our European growth strategy,” Yabie CEO Siri Hyltén-Cavallius said in the release.

“Through this partnership with Worldpay, we’re bringing our user-friendly approach to POS technology to the UK. Partnering with established payment leaders like Worldpay allows us to bring new levels of simplicity to SMBs, empowering them to thrive with new, powerful tools to manage their business.”

The release notes that the solution is available across retail, hospitality and service sectors in three bundles (Lite, Standard and Pro), integrating Worldpay’s payment hardware and technology with Yabie’s software.

The partnership is happening as SMBs find themselves outmatched by big retailers in terms of technology, as PYMNTS wrote last month.

For example, research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that, despite the widespread growth of mobile shopping, under half of all SMBs offer mobile-specific apps.

“Globally, SMBs are 45% less likely to offer a seamless cross-channel shopping experience than large merchants,” that report said. “SMBs offer eight fewer digital shopping features, on average, than large merchants — but we found shoppers want to use the same digital shopping features regardless of channel or merchant size.”

A wide range of people in the eight countries surveyed by PYMNTS for this research say they frequently engage with their devices. Close to a third of shoppers said they browse their phone daily, or almost daily, while nearly 28% said they did so a few times a week. Just 11.6% of respondents said they “never” browse their phones when it comes to shopping. In addition, 23.7% of consumers used a phone to support in-store shopping, while just under a quarter of shoppers said they use a phone to complete an online purchase.