Buy Now, Regulate Later

Dateline: Woking, 12th October 2023.The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) sector continues to evolve and now the techfins are ramping up the competition. Earlier this year Apple launched its BNPL service in the US to compete for the more than $100 billion in purchases that Americans are making using this payment method (and I don’t doubt that my good friend Ron Shevlin was absolutely right to call it “a winner”) and now Amazon Pay has launched two new BNPL programs to serve different customer segments, ahead of the holiday shopping season. The first allows retailers using Amazon Pay to offer their shoppers the checkout option of Affirm, the second offers convenient spend spreading to Prime Visa and Amazon Visa credit cards. It not only fintechs, banks and techfins looking at this sector though: regulators are too. ShareMeeting a NeedThe growth of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services in many markets is has been rapid, and the UK is now different. It is an established option for UK consumers. More than one-third of all Brits have used BNPL services (more than 19 million people), a fraction that has doubled over the last two years.Subscribe nowThe main players in the UK market (including Klarna, ClearPay, LayBuy and PayPal as well some of the banks) are clearly providing a service that consumers want and I personally know people who find it a convenient way to manage expenditure. It is currently the fastest-growing online payment method in the UK, with a growth rate double that of bank transfers and more…Buy Now, Regulate Later