Installments are flexing a new muscle for a new generation of consumers looking for flexible, uncomplicated ways to pay. We’ve seen this trend building for years. Now, BNPL options are accelerating along with the rise in a range of digital conveniences – from shopping online to tapping to pay and curbside pickup.
As this space grows, issuers, acquirers, and fintechs need to decide not only if they’ll offer BNPL solutions, but how they’ll do it. Will their offering span both online and offline experiences? Different payment forms including credit, debit, or even prepaid? Cross-border options?
At Visa, we’re focused on answering these questions by building new experiences, enabling technology, and fostering partnerships for our clients. In fact, Visa has just launched a new partner program with more than 20 partners already on board. Visa Ready for BNPL will fast-track the implementation and scalability of Visa’s BNPL offering by enabling fintechs and select issuers to easily and quickly integrate Visa’s solutions. The program enables tech companies that would like to have their own BNPL solution reach Visa’s vast network of clients, helping boost their visibility.
Visa’s made partnerships a cornerstone of its BNPL portfolio to better enable its clients – and we’re not alone. Here are a few ways that partnerships are creating greater opportunity and changing the BNPL landscape for the better:
Working smarter, together
Building any piece of technology from scratch is no simple task, and it takes time and expertise that some businesses may not have. Working with a global brand like Visa, and pre-vetted technology partners, adds new capabilities to the mix without requiring a totally new solution to be built.
Visa Ready for BNPL gives clients the ability to choose from partners that Visa has already vetted. Eliminating this step can help decrease the time to market for new solutions, making onboarding a partner much faster, and adding the assurance that they’re integrated with Visa solutions.
Driving new use cases
Visa Ready for BNPL is focused on three key types of partnerships: resellers, enablers and referrers – with a range of use cases across pre- during- and post-purchase installments enabled across new or existing credentials. For instance, an acquirer might leverage Visa APIs and resell to their merchant base, while a point-of-sale software manufacturer might pre-integrate those APIs into their POS solution to take to merchants as an enabler. Referral partners can bring new capabilities like underwriting to Visa clients to support faster enablement of Visa BNPL Portfolio solutions.
With ease of implementation and less burden to build tech from the ground up, the sky is the limit for companies with new ideas and use cases. Vital team members and resources can shift from building technology that already exists to imagining an optimized and unique customer experience. After all, who knows a client base better than an issuer or seller themselves?
Partnerships close the gap on customer experience
According to recent Visa research, nearly half of consumers (49%) say they are more likely to use a BNPL offering if it’s available through their existing card. And 70% of those surveyed were likely to use BNPL if their purchases were eligible for the same rewards and loyalty points as credit and debit card purchases.1
Today, sellers implementing an installment offering must consider the entire customer experience – not just ecommerce, but also physical stores. As it stands, installments are not always a unified experience across businesses – whether it’s on an existing or new card, or pre- or post-purchase. And installment options in cross-border commerce are emerging as a new frontier. Technology innovation and what is happening in installments today has broadened access to credit. With a multitude of new use cases, partnerships are essential to closing capability gaps.
Charting the future of flexible payment options, together
As BNPL solutions increasingly become a must-have capability for both card issuers and sellers across the globe, partnerships and partner ecosystems are central to delivering compelling experiences that give people choice in how they pay and get paid – securely and at scale.
1Morning Consult & Visa BNPL Study, November 2021