Zara partners with Irish-founded financial service Stripe for its pre-loved resale platform
The service offers customers a way of extending their Zara product’s lifetime through resale and repair options
The Irish-founded financial service Stripe has been selected as Zara’s payments partner to process all transactions for the retailer’s pre-owned clothing marketplace, Zara Pre-Owned.
Zara will use Stripe Connect to move funds between buyers and sellers of pre-owned Zara products.
Stripe Connect enables Zara to embed Stripe’s global payments platform directly into the Zara Pre-Owned marketplace, offloading all payments-related requirements onto Stripe, while keeping the customer experience fully Zara-branded. Asos Marketplace, Shopify, and Salesforce are other online services that presently use Stripe Connect.
Through Zara Pre-Owned, the Spanish retailer offers its customers a resale opportunity to extend the lifetime of their products. Owners take pictures of their unwanted Zara products, which are then cross-referenced with Zara’s product portfolio, giving potential customers detailed information on the items they wish to purchase.
The platform also offers Zara customers other sustainable choices, like the option to donate their clothes to charity or request a repair of their existing items.
Stripe was launched by Tipperary brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, receiving early investments from PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and it is currently valued at $50 billion. The company is dual-headquartered in San Francisco, California and the Silicon Docks district of Dublin.
Zara first launched Zara Pre-Owned in November 2022, marking the fast fashion retailer’s first foray into a resale and repair model.
In 2016, it joined other retail chains like H&M in installing donation bins in-store to encourage customers to drop off unwanted items in fashion “bins” – the idea being that the textiles collected would be repurposed, and those unfit for reuse would be downsized into products like cleaning cloths or insulation fibres.
Its move into resale and repair follows a broader trend towards circularity in the fast fashion industry. Last month, H&M partnered with online consignment store thredUp to launch its resale platform in the US, while Shein Exchange, launched last October, offers a similar service.
This comes as the fashion industry faces increasing levels of criticism over its high carbon footprint: fashion’s greenhouse gas emissions equate to eight to 10 per cent of the global total, according to the United Nations.
This is coupled with a shift in consumers’ priorities, as shoppers are demanding more circular options to reduce their environmental impact. It is estimated that by 2027, the pre-loved fashion market will double in global sales to €317 billion by 2027.
Zara Pre-Owned is currently only available to customers in the UK, and will expand across other European markets in the second half of 2023.
“Sustainability in retail is finally receiving the attention it deserves to help protect our fragile planet. We're thrilled that Zara has chosen Stripe as they lead the way,” said Eileen O’Mara, head of global sales at Stripe.
