Rebel on Their Partnership with Billogram

A legacy-free strategy built on simplicity

As a challenger in a traditional market, Rebel has adopted a clear strategy: avoid unnecessary costs and complexity in order to deliver on their name – Clean, Simple, Affordable Energy. That means only offering variable electricity contracts and providing customer service digitally, not by phone.

“We’re fine with not appealing to every single customer. The electricity market is massive, with millions of potential subscribers. If five percent like what we offer, that’s a great place to start,”
says Oliver Schmidt, Head of Partnerships and Business Development (and the office coffee brewer) at Rebel.

With a solid background in the energy sector, Oliver co-founded Rebel in 2018. The mindset from day one was to keep things simple – and not overestimate how engaged people really are in the topic.

“People want their homes to be 20°C and their phones to be charged. And ideally, they don’t want to contribute more than necessary to climate change. That’s it.”

The dream of a utility free from legacy systems

Despite relatively low customer interest, traditional energy providers have gradually expanded their offerings over time – particularly since deregulation in the 1990s. According to Oliver, this evolution hasn’t served customers or businesses in the long run.

“It all adds up to an enormous legacy – both in processes and IT. Everything gets harder to do. When we started Rebel, we thought: what if we could start from scratch? We wanted a fresh, modern energy company where every process is automated and streamlined.”

“It’s not rocket science,” he adds. “You need to understand how the energy market works, sure. But once the foundation is in place, most of it runs on its own.”

“The only thing we chose not to build ourselves”

Oliver shares his frustration with legacy systems with many of his colleagues. Most of Rebel’s employees have a background in IT – even if they now work in different roles. It’s part of the company’s DNA to build as much as possible in-house, including their own electricity trading system. While time-consuming, Oliver says it was worth it because existing solutions didn’t meet their standards.

Initially, they planned to build their own invoicing solution too.

“We thought, how hard can it be? We already had all the billing data in our own system. Shouldn’t we be able to send invoices to customers as well?”

But it quickly became clear that invoicing involved much more than delivery.

“There are other things to think about – like handling failed payments.”

After speaking with several providers, Oliver and his team chose Billogram. It was about both the platform and the philosophy behind it.

“While others took more of a ‘this is how payments work – end of story’ approach, Billogram focused on what was best for the customer. That mindset felt familiar to us.”

Fast implementation with zero customization

To stay true to their legacy-free approach, Rebel asked Billogram to set up simple, standardized processes for invoicing and payments.

“We made it clear that we didn’t want custom solutions. We said, ‘Just tell us what works best, and we’ll adapt our data to that,’” says Oliver.

Implementation happened in parallel with Rebel building out their business – and it moved fast.

“We first met Billogram in January 2019. In April, our first customer was onboarded. By May, the first invoice was out. The entire process only took a few months. Billogram thought our timeline was aggressive, but we said, ‘We’ll deliver. Will you?’ And it worked.”

The result was exactly what Rebel wanted:

“Maybe even simpler than we expected. We realized we didn’t even need a finance or invoicing department – because the platform handled failed payments and reminders automatically.”

A partner that shares our mindset

With simplicity comes scalability. Despite now having tens of thousands of customers, Rebel’s admin load remains minimal. And just like the service they offer, customers don’t need to think much about their invoice – but they can still stay informed if they want to.

“Billogram thinks like us. Whether it’s switching providers or making a payment, things happen in a process. A customer signs up, becomes a customer, gets an invoice, and so on. These are events we subscribe to in real time using webhooks – simple integrations. And if we want to take action, we can.”

This shared mindset also applies to handling late payments.

“We like that Billogram doesn’t make money on reminders. They focus on what’s good for the customer, just like we do. That gives us the freedom to choose whether or not to charge late fees—which we don’t. I totally respect that others do, but it would’ve been hard for us to work with a provider whose business model relied on those charges.”

Simple payments + clear communication = over 99.5% payment rate

Late payments aren’t really an issue for Rebel.

“Our payment rate is consistently over 99.5%. And over 40% of our customers use automatic payments like direct debit.”

Oliver attributes those numbers to a smooth payment experience and clear communication.

“New customers get regular updates during the switch, so they know when to expect the first invoice. Once a payment is made, they get a confirmation. Even for recurring payments, we send an email with how much will be debited and when. We don’t want to overwhelm customers, but timely, relevant updates build trust.”

This also reduces the number of customer service contacts related to billing – though a few do still pop up.

“The invoice is one of the few touchpoints in our industry, so when we do get questions, it’s often about billing. It could be a new customer who thinks they were double-billed because they’re still getting an invoice from their grid provider. Or someone who wants a discount for being a long-time customer. But we explain that we don’t do discounts – we offer everyone the same fair price.”

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