The buy now pay later industry is evolving to meet merchants’ needs better than ever before. Driven by the latest innovations in tech, solutions that differ from traditional Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) products are emerging onto the market. Merchants should shop around to ensure they use the best and most suitable product for their business.
This new generation of BNPL is characterised by diversity, which can be defined as utilising a suite of multiple lenders with differing risk profiles to cover a broader range of basket sizes. As a result, merchants can now benefit from more flexible retail finance solutions tailored to their own specific needs, as well as their customers.
Providing a match for all basket sizes and sectors
Larger purchases have traditionally been a problem area for buy now pay later providers. This leaves many merchants to ask how such a payment solution can drive sales in the long term. This question has been particularly pertinent for merchants operating in sectors such as education, electronics, and home improvement. These are markets where basket sizes are frequently higher than many traditional BNPL products can accommodate.
Indeed, many BNPL solutions only cater to smaller basket sizes, such as those associated with fast fashion. However, integrating flexible BNPL products equipped with lender aggregation can empower merchants to convert more browsers into buyers. With a range of risk appetites built into their offering, multi-lender products can facilitate a greater number of purchases, particularly for merchants in those sectors with typically larger basket sizes.
Leveraging multiple lenders also allows merchants to offer a greater range of repayment options. This includes 12, 24 and 26-month instalments with finance available up to £25,000. In doing so, they offer themselves even more opportunities to maximise their checkout conversion rate as consumers gain confidence in their ability to finance purchases.
Meeting the needs of as many merchants as possible, in both basket size and payment structure, is absolutely key. Deko’s multi-lender marketplace, for instance, can support baskets of up to £25,000. This makes shopping with a Deko-supported merchant more flexible and ultimately more favourable to customers. Its multi-lender model allows it to confidently increase the basket acceptance rate by an average of 26% and say “yes” to more transactions.
Providing more flexible retail finance benefits merchants and consumers alike. Consumers can pay in a way that works for them when making purchases related to education, electronics, and home improvement – all products and services that can improve their quality of life and allow them to invest in their future. Merchants, meanwhile, will enjoy a more successful shopper conversion rate.
In addition, it is no longer sufficient for merchants to think of BNPL as a purely online phenomenon. Although the long-term trend favours online shopping, the post-pandemic rebound in in-person retail provides an opportunity to invest in retail finance products that can be used in-store as well as online or over the phone.
The future of payments
The next phase of payment solutions has been built to provide optimal service to all merchants in the broadest possible array of sectors. Deko’s lender aggregation is the future of payments. It provides a tailored panel of lenders behind its products and supplies merchants with truly flexible payment solutions.
This flexibility will ultimately help merchants reduce basket abandonment and drive sales. This will become all the more important as the cost of living continues to bite. Merchants must make progress on improving affordability for their customers without compromising their business models.
Merchants must therefore get to grips with the different options available to them, from traditional BNPL options to new, flexible finance solutions that can provide a platform for growing sales and their business.
Deko is a leading point of sale finance platform in the UK. Since its inception in 2010, the business (formerly Pay4Later Ltd) has pioneered several industry firsts across the UK payments landscape. It is well positioned to help more merchants participate in the growing BNPL and checkout finance market. Designed from the ground up for automated online lending, Deko allows merchants to instantly offer credit as a payment option across all sales channels and works across multiple lenders to boost approval rates. Deko works with thousands of merchants and a growing number of lenders to provide merchants and customers with simple, easy and accessible finance.
