What happened: French payment giant Worldline has announced a strategic partnership with website builder Wix (Finextra). The partnership works in both ways, where existing Worldline customers can access Wix website-building capabilities more quickly. For us, much more interesting, Wix will implement Worldline’s payment features.
My comment: Unlike Shopify, Wix offers a website builder for many use cases, including simple landing pages or blogs. That being said, Wix also strongly focuses on the e-commerce segment and offers an e-commerce website solution, including a payment acceptance (very similar to Shopify). With the new partnership, Wix plans to grow its offering by supporting more local currencies and expanding to other countries. Wix announced it will roll out the latest features from this Worldline partnership in Europe and the Asia Pacific.
So far, the partnership seems entirely focused on closing these “geographic gaps,” but when I see a collaboration in this space, I cannot help but wonder if Wix is also working on other financial products. Shopify’s success in financial services is heavily built in the US, where approx. 57% of their merchants are based, and only approx. 30% of Wix’s merchants are US-based. However, integrated financing options for Wix’s merchants still seem a no-brainer, even in Europe. This is not something Worldline can help with, but who knows—maybe this partnership will free up resources on Wix’s side to tackle this area.
