How to sell services online – challenges and regulations

In this webinar, Anthoni Noyon, CEO of Cocolabs is describing the challenges encountered in the service marketplace sector and the key points to make your online business shine. Martin-Pierre Gautlier, CMO de Lemonway, PSP partner is explaining all the challenges related to the payement and the regulations on service marketplace. Let’s dig into it!

The key points of selling services online

Selling services online is more difficult than most people think because it is entirely different from selling a product. You can not pack a service into a box and then ship it like you can with a product. Services depends on a lot of parameters: location, avalibility, performer and even to go further, you will never have the same service even if it has been performed by the same person, at the same time on the same location. Because of that, services are not sold like products would be. The user experience is not the same than the one of product marketplace ; the experience is focused on the availibity, location and something really specific at service marketplaces: trust. That’s why our solution integrate an high performance algorithm for service marketplace to make sur to match the best seller with the asker. 

Complex and regulated payment: a challenge for services marketplaces 

An important question to ask is how are payments made on a marketplace that is selling services? Operating a marketplace is difficult, and you must organize your sales to handle any challenges that may arise. A seller must deal with any regulatory constraints or specific local requirements to sell their service. Therefore, you must always have a payment method that is in line with the regulatory requirements of the country you are selling services in. It is also very important to consider regulatory constraints because it is forbidden to collect money on the behalf of third parties. There are three methods for collecting payment: benefiting from authorization, asking for an exemption, or benefiting from the authorization of a third (PSP). PSP is a good option because it gives you complete control of your payment flows. By using this method, you manage how you are collecting payments, and they KYC (how to onboard buyers and sellers) can suit your customers’ payment habits. Lemonway allows for payment with almost every type of card, it allows for bank transfers, and even accepts payment methods like Apple Pay or Google Pay.

360 travaux case: a service marketplace made by Cocolabs

360 travaux is a marketplace where you can find a home service provider, meaning you can hire a painter, electrician, carpenter, etc. This project has three main challenges that it has overcome:

• Delimit. To be more specific, delimit means to have specific boundaries which makes it easier for the customers to describe their requirements. A guided decision tool is implemented that asks customers a series of questions and then will match them with a service provider based on their response. 
• Payment adaptation. The second challenge that 360 travaux has overcome is payment adaptation, the platform has more payment customization to better fit the needs of projects of any size.
• Reaching new vendors. The hardest challenge that 360 travaux has overcome is making the platform usable to vendors who are not familiar with selling their services online. These vendors give a general description of their services, as well as a specific description of a service so they can be matched with the right customers at the right time. 

Have any questions? If you are wanting to create your own marketplace, call one of our project managers and bring your idea to life! In the meanwhile, if you want to dig into the service marketplace world, do not hesitate to go read our “Understanding the service marketplace universe “article.