From Italy to Europe (and beyond): MultiSafepay's solutions for Vico Food Box's international growth
Vico Food Box’s mission is to bring the excellence of Made in Italy into the homes of Italian expats and Italian food lovers throughout Europe. A goal that requires a sales platform that is not only user-friendly but also easy for merchants to manage, combined with a payment system that facilitates conversions and offers multiple local payment options to meet the needs of buyers from different countries. However, no goal is daunting when you have the right allies by your side to drive your growth.
In one year, things have changed a lot for the young Neapolitan company, and for the better: Vico Food Box has not only increased its popularity throughout Europe but, thanks to the partnership with MultiSafepay, has also overcome most of the challenges related to platform and to online payment management. In this article, Antonio Guarrera, CFO and founder of Vico Food Box, reveals all the achievements we reached together.
The merchant
Vico Food Box was founded in 2019 by a group of very young and dynamic minds. The project took off from the personal experience of the four partners living abroad and became, in a short time, an internationally well popular and appreciated business.
As Antonio points out, “We started with nothing—just a small winery and a lot of willpower. My partners, Vittorio Colonna, Debora Celentano, and Gennaro Viscardi, and I worked hard to give many expats like us the chance to enjoy Italian food and feel at home, even when far away”.
Today, Vico Food Box is no longer a start-up but an internationally established company, that sells and ships to 25 European countries. The best business opportunities come from the markets of Germany and France - where strong demand is driven by a large population of resident Italian expats and a strong interest in local products like pasta and tomatoes - and the Netherlands, Vico Food Box's first open market and a key hub for the distribution of refrigerated products. Not to be underestimated is the importance of Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, where consumers on the Vico Food Box site prefer Italian spirits, especially wines and liqueurs.
Buyers on the Vico Food Box website are Italians living abroad and foreigners who love Italian cuisine. Users have a catalog with more than 4,500 articles, divided between brands with large distribution and niche products from regional producers.
“We want to make those who live far away feel at home. It is no coincidence that we consider Vico Food Box not as a product ecommerce but as a service one: those who receive our box enjoy a real experience, a journey through flavors that take them back to their homeland”.
Concerning this are the company's founding values: reliability and full transparency towards consumers. “We aim for maximum customer satisfaction. We are always ready to provide support, refunds, or coupons when issues occur with shipments, damaged or missing goods. And it seems that we are on the right track: our customer satisfaction rate is over 90 percent".
Our payment solutions for Vico Food Box
The choice of MultiSafepay
Vico Food Box faced multiple challenges regarding payments. Starting with the need for better usability of the platform, especially regarding reporting and reconciliation: “The previous supplier often struggled to reconcile statements with balances, occasionally providing incorrect balances or blocking payments during month-to-month transitions. These issues have been completely resolved with your solution, which has provided us with an intuitive and efficient dashboard, allowing us to gain complete and accurate insights into business trends.”
The second need for Vico Food Box was to ensure that the costs associated with the payment provider were acceptable with the final cart: “Thanks to your pricing model, we were also able to achieve the goal of lowering the shopping cart costs in order not to charge too much the final user".
Finally, Antonio is keen to highlight the human side of the relationship: “With Stefano Calce, Business Sales Manager, and Luca Calce, Account Expert, we got on very well right from the start, thanks to the fact that we are from the same geographic area. Beyond the characteristics offered by your solutions, we are delighted with your customer management. The success of this partnership is not only related to the efficiency of the platform but also to the team behind it, which makes the difference”.
Thanks to MultiSafepay, we improved the management of reporting and solved the difficulties related to the reconciliation of payments
Security, one of our strength points
Antonio underlines that security is one of the strengths of our solutions, starting with tokenization, which the company will implement shortly.
Our feature for protecting sensitive data, such as credit card information, replaces the data with a token—a sequence of random numbers. Once the token is securely stored by the payment method, the data is placed in the associated vault, where it remains securely protected. In the event of fraud or a data breach, the use of tokens ensures that potential fraudsters cannot access sensitive user information.
The ability to securely identify and store data not only provides optimal protection but also enables a smoother and more immediate checkout process. For consumers, this translates into a faster, more seamless checkout experience, and for merchants, it leads to increased conversions.
“The ease in completing the purchase is no small advantage, especially for customers who are not very familiar with online shopping”.
Furthermore, the fact that data management is handled by MultiSafepay relieves the merchant of any associated risk.
Antonio points out another aspect to consider: the security associated with unsettled transactions. When a transaction is not settled, it is difficult for the merchant to verify why this happens or whether one is at risk of fraud. However, MultiSafepay's fraud control system allows for an immediate check of suspicious payments and orders. “It is important to protect the merchant's and customers' security. And with you, we feel perfectly safe”.
MultiSafepay's fraud control system allows us to check suspicious payments immediately. With you, we feel perfectly safe.
The results achieved together
The integration of an efficient and easy-to-manage payment platform, designed to drive growth, has enabled Vico Food Box to make a quantum leap. By working closely with the merchant every day, providing tailored solutions and functionalities that align with their business type and target market, and always keeping growth objectives in mind, we can confidently say that we have contributed to the company’s success and international expansion.
The first result achieved with MultiSafepay is an improved purchasing process, thanks to a smoother, faster, and more efficient checkout. Recently, we assisted Vico Food Box in transitioning from WooCommerce to PrestaShop, where we implemented our payment components to seamlessly integrate the payment process into the merchant's site—without any external redirection. This not only speeds up the shopping experience, but also keeps customers on the site, making them feel more secure when it's time to pay, which typically leads to higher satisfaction.
Our payment components also enable a dynamic checkout, displaying the most suitable payment methods for each transaction based on factors such as the user's geographic location or the total amount spent.
Since the end of September, our payment components have contributed to a 20% increase in transactions on the Vico Food Box site, signaling the successful optimization of the checkout process.
The integration of new payment methods has also contributed to the success of our collaboration: “It was crucial to integrate MyBank, which put an end to all the issues our customers had in executing immediate transfers. Also, adding digital wallets such as Google Pay and Apple Pay made a difference. Overall, you have helped us build a significantly more user-friendly checkout for all customers. To date, 80-85% of the transactions on our platform are done through MultiSafepay”. Although we are the primary payment provider on the Vico Food Box platform, the merchant continues to maintain other external providers and payment systems purely as a precaution.
In the future, we plan to add additional payment methods, such as Alipay+ and WeChat Pay, in line with the merchant's plans for international expansion.
Antonio highlights that the partnership with MultiSafepay is solid and successful: “Trust is the basis of everything. We strongly believe in the value of partnerships, and as a young company, we need to trust those who work with us. When joining a partnership, everyone, customers and suppliers, must come out on top. All of them have to grow together. Regarding MultiSafepay, relying on excellent pricing and custom-built integrations was valuable.
The future of Vico Food Box
What will be the next steps for this dynamic and determined team? Everything points to a bright future, starting with the intention to expand into the USA market and strengthen in Europe. But that is not all. For Vico Food Box, an ecommerce platform dedicated exclusively to the foreign B2B target market and further projects to promote an ever-widening knowledge of Made in Italy will also come soon. “We would like to open temporary stores in Europe to offer Vico Food Box branded products and some of the many local specialties that make our food and wine culture great".
While significant progress has already been made, an exciting future still awaits. We look forward to continuing our support for the Vico Food Box team as they navigate their upcoming business challenges and decisions.
The important thing is never to stop, just as never to stop studying. In this regard, Antonio advises future e-commerce managers about embarking on an activity like his: 'Whoever wants to start an online Food & Grocery business must know both the European laws and the Italian legislation, which is often quite complicated. In addition, you'd better surround yourself with reliable experts who can give you an exhaustive overview of an ecommerce business's costs. And forget about those who assure easy and immediate earnings".
Do you want a more customer-friendly checkout that is ready for international success? Contact our experts and learn how to grow with the most secure and efficient payment solutions on the market.
