After re-shaping both #fintech and #ecommerce, can Buy-Now-Pay-Later now challenge card payments? Let’s take a look.
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#BNPL owes its success to its double appeal to consumers and merchants. For consumers it’s convenience through a streamlined, low-friction, integrated check-out experience, whereas for merchants it's boosting conversion rates and average order value.
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As a result, what started as a niche offering is now a multibillion industry worth globally about $US316 billion only on the e-com side (2023 figures, source: WorldPay).
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But can BNPL really challenge credit cards?
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Let’s start from the basics: both credit cards and BNPL are unsecured consumer credit,?however there is a big difference in terms of risk underwriting: whereas the risk assessment for credit cards takes place ahead of the purchase and is based on hard, income-sided facts, BNPL manages credit risk by accessing alternative #data sources in real-time that enable instant approve/decline decisioning.
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Depending on market dynamics BNPL can be card-based or not, which can be a significant adoption driver for consumers with no access to credit cards, like young generations (the model’s most active customers).
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Despite its fast ascend, BNPL accounts today (source: WorldPay) for only 5% of the global e-commerce #payments market compared with 15% for credit cards and 8% for debit cards. On the POS side the numbers are even less favourable with BNPL at 1% vs 22% for credit cards and 18% for debit cards.
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However, seen from a future perspective BNPL is best positioned to benefit from the declining use of cash globally: it is expected to grow significantly both on e-com and POS. In markets like the Nordics it has already reached double-digit e-commerce market share figures (in Sweden, Klarna’s home market, BNPL has a 25% market share).
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BUT
BNPL has 2 main disadvantages vs credit cards:
1.????Its inability to offer credit-card like rewards like return points, miles or cash backs.
2.????Relative (vs credit cards) limited acceptance on the merchant side
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Nonetheless, there is a creative work-around to these issues: virtual cards.
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The trick is the following: virtual cards tied to BNPL offerings, which can act (and be accepted) as normal credit cards.
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Benefits:
-??????Work across merchants
-??????Lose the acceptance problem (BNPL acceptance becomes credit card acceptance)
-??????No difference to the typical BNPL benefits for both consumers (i.e. partial payments) and merchants (advance payment in full)
-??????Additional flexibility for consumers
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As the market evolves, BNPL will be transforming itself to adjust, primarily across 3 main directions: 1) moving away from pure Pay Later plays and into more holistic payment strategies 2) fully integrated experiences, embedded across verticals using big data and AI for hyper-personalization 3) focus on the POS financing opportunity.
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Opinions: my own, Graphic sources: EY & Prove, Medici?