Cazoo: a new way to buy and sell your car
Cazoo is on a mission to make buying and selling your car as simple as buying or selling anything else online.
Founded in 2018, Cazoo customers can buy, finance, subscribe to or sell a car online in as little as 72 hours.
With a team of over 3,800 people in the UK, Germany, France and Portugal, Cazoo has completely transformed the old-fashioned used car market. A recent entry onto the New York Stock Exchange, plus high-profile partnerships with the likes of Everton, Aston Villa and The Hundred cricket tournament, have turned Cazoo into a household name.
An obsession with putting the customer first has meant the online retailer has turned buying a car into an unexpected delight. It was this drive for better customer experiences that led Cazoo to consider open banking payments and TrueLayer.
The challenge
Cazoo’s unrelenting focus on customer experience meant it needed payment options that matched the rest of its straightforward customer journey. Cazoo already offers card payments and financing options, but the online retailer wanted to give customers more choice, while solving some common credit and debit card problems.
“One huge pain point for us and our customers was card transaction limits, as a car retail purchase obviously means a high average order value,” says Cazoo’s Product Manager, Sitong Wei. “Open banking payments offered a solution to this.”
The Cazoo team also saw other benefits from open banking payments, including eliminating card-not-present fraud, having bank authentication baked into the payment experience, and a sharp reduction in costs compared to card payments.
The solution
Knowing that open banking was the way forward, the Cazoo team also considered what their new payment provider would need to help them with.
One priority was the ability to extensively customise the payment journey, to make it consistent with the rest of the Cazoo car-buying experience. Another key consideration was a high level of coverage across UK banks.
“We chose TrueLayer because it could offer everything we wanted from open banking, plus several value-adds, including a full library of APIs and high levels of customisation, which separated it from other providers,” explains Sitong.
Cazoo integrated TrueLayer’s Payments API directly into its online offering in May 2021, allowing customers to choose to pay by open banking, just as they would choose a credit or debit card payment.
Another core part of Cazoo’s offering is Cazoo Purchase, where a customer sells their car to Cazoo. This created another challenge for the car retailer to solve. Card-based payouts can take up to five days, something which unsettles customers.
TrueLayer offered a solution for this, too. Cazoo integrated Payments and our Data API into the customer journey in September 2021. This means Cazoo can instantly verify a customer’s details, and customers can see money in their account before the car has even left their driveway.
“With payouts, there is a high level of financial anxiety if you don’t get thousands back in your bank right away. The ability to return that money in a quick, transparent and frictionless way creates a superior customer experience. Open banking, delivered by TrueLayer’s technology, provides us with that.
Jonathan Howell, Chief Technology Officer
The results
Since integrating TrueLayer, Cazoo has seen over 25% of customers using open banking payments when buying their car.
On the payouts side, Sitong explains 100% of cars sold to Cazoo are paid out using TrueLayer. “We’ve not needed to offer an alternative way to set up a bank transfer for the payout. We monitor the conversion, and the uptake has been very strong.”
The payouts experience has proved such a hit with customers, it has even been singled out for praise in Cazoo’s TrustPilot reviews, with comments like, “Money was in my account in 10 seconds of the car being put on the truck.”
“Take up of TrueLayer has been very positive. We now see around 25% of eligible payments going through bank transfer via TrueLayer.
Sitong Wei, Product Manager
