British used car marketplace Motorway has launched a secure online wallet that allows dealers to fund it and then release money to private sellers immediately when its time to complete transactions.
The Motorway Pay service has been designed to improve the stock acquisition process for dealers who use Motorway’s online platform to purchase vehicles. It makes paying for new stock, fast, easy, transparent and secure.
This tackles a problem dealers have of the payment process taking up a lot of time and resources to set up payment profiles for each individual seller they buy a car from, verifying documents and finalising payments. It also creates a smoother process for sellers if Motorway manages the payments and releases funds to the seller at the right time, according to the company.
Motorway Pay allows dealers to pre-load digital wallets before a vehicle collection and then use the funds to instantly pay for the vehicle with one click. The service manages all the administrative processes which reduces the waiting time for both dealers and sellers and immediate payment confirmations create clear outcomes and a transparent paper trail for both. The online wallet also manages the settlement of outstanding finance. Previously dealers had to settle finance separately from the seller’s payment.
The Motorway Pay service is free to dealers who buy vehicles through Motorway and includes an assurance policy that all payments will go to the right place. The service was soft launched in January and tested with a number of dealers, during which over 1,000 payments worth over £20 million were transacted through Motorway Pay. Dealers who were involved in the trial reported making savings in administration and time spent on transactions and said the overall experience was better for them and sellers. The service is now being offered to all dealers.
“Removing the hassle involved with paying private sellers has been a hard problem to solve, but we’ve built a powerful, secure and robust solution that makes buying cars on Motorway in high volumes easier than ever before,” said Motorway COO James Wilson.
Motorway said over £2 billion of vehicle purchases by dealers had been completed in the last 12 months and that volumes were continuing to increase quickly. The company said sales are now over 1,000 cars each day on average and over 1,500 in the past few weeks.
In March, Motorway launched a range of new product features that it said will make it easier for dealers to find and buy stock.