European B2B BNPL provider Hokodo has ceased operations after eight years, having financed more than €500 million in invoices, raised around $177 million across equity and debt, and held the first full EU payments licence in the category. The three founders are launching Liquidity Lab, an AI-focused B2B trade credit consultancy. Hokodo is not the only B2B BNPL provider to close recently: Amsterdam-based Sprinque also shut down, with the decision made in summer 2024.
The B2B BNPL Market in Europe
B2B BNPL is the business equivalent of consumer BNPL. Merchants offer 30/60/90 payment terms or instalments at checkout, the provider pays the merchant immediately, and the provider takes on the credit risk of the business buyer. The category emerged around 2018-2020 alongside the consumer BNPL boom, with Hokodo, Sprinque, Billie, Mondu, and a handful of others competing across Europe. Billie and Mondu are still active.
What Hokodo's Post-Mortem Says
The Hokodo founders published an unusually candid post on what went wrong. Two things stood out to me. First, they took too long to narrow their ideal customer profile, trying to serve everyone from small marketplaces to large enterprise merchants, with the resulting product complexity slowing them down. Second, in the 2021/22 funding environment, with new competitors launching every day, they mistook small wins for definitive signals of product-market fit because they were worried about losing the market to new entrants.
