Buckaroo Capital brings merchant finance to Benelux

Buckaroo and YouLend have launched Buckaroo Capital, giving Buckaroo merchants in the Benelux access to working capital through the payment platform.

The service allows entrepreneurs to view available finance offers and apply within the Buckaroo portal using their transaction data. Repayments are collected automatically as a percentage of future revenue, so amounts rise and fall with sales.

The launch expands Buckaroo's financial services for its customer base of more than 54,000 businesses across the Benelux. The model is intended to reduce the delays and paperwork many smaller businesses face when seeking funding from banks.

Platform finance

The product runs on financing infrastructure from YouLend, a UK-based embedded finance provider that works with eCommerce, payments and technology platforms in more than 10 countries. It has provided more than 370,000 financings to date.

Buckaroo, a Utrecht-based payments service provider, has been expanding the services around its payments platform. It recently announced a partnership with Bizcuit to strengthen links with accounting software, part of a broader push to add financial tools within the systems merchants already use.

Embedded finance has drawn growing interest from payment companies and software platforms looking to add lending, insurance, and banking products to the transactions customers already manage. In this case, Buckaroo is using merchant payment data to present funding options within the same environment businesses use for payments.

Traditional bank borrowing remains difficult for many small and medium-sized businesses, especially when trading conditions change quickly or short-term working capital is needed. Revenue-based repayment structures have emerged as an alternative because they allow repayments to move with sales rather than follow a fixed instalment schedule.

Paul Scholten, Chief Executive Officer of Buckaroo, said the launch is intended to address that funding gap.

"Many entrepreneurs need quick access to working capital without lengthy application procedures," Scholten said. "By linking financing to transaction data from our platform, entrepreneurs can invest in the growth of their business more quickly."

The arrangement also deepens an existing relationship between the two companies. The Buckaroo integration expands the availability of YouLend's financing product to merchants in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg through a payment platform they already use.

Luuk Visschedijk, Head of Strategic Partnerships at YouLend, said the company sees the launch as a way to place funding offers directly into merchants' daily workflow.

"By integrating our technology into the Buckaroo platform, we make YouLend financing more accessible to entrepreneurs in the Benelux," Visschedijk said. "Within their existing environment, they can immediately see what financing is available and make efficient use of it."

Benelux focus

The rollout is focused on Buckaroo customers in the Benelux, where the company has a large merchant base across online and in-person payments. The product is aimed at entrepreneurs seeking working capital for day-to-day business needs, with eligibility and offer visibility tied to transaction history on the platform.

For Buckaroo, the move brings financing alongside payments into a single merchant environment. For YouLend, it adds another distribution partner to a network that already includes marketplaces, eCommerce companies and payment providers such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, UpWork, WorldLine, Teya, SumUp, Tide and Dojo.

The launch reflects a broader shift in financial services, as access to credit is increasingly being built into software used by merchants rather than offered only through standalone banking channels. In the Benelux, Buckaroo Capital is another example of lenders and payment providers using transaction data to assess eligibility and deliver funds within an existing platform.