Credit at the point of sale is an elegant and obvious idea that technology has only now become able to automate confidently.
Empowered by embedded finance platforms, the Pay Later market is expected to top $1 trillion in 2026 – an eleven-fold increase over its standing in 2019, say industry experts.
Dmytro Voronenko, CEO and Co-founder of TurnKey Lender recently held a keynote at the BNPL Asia event. In it, he summarizes the pay later phenomenon to date, breaks down the challenges facing both creditors and embedded lenders, as well as regulatory pushback and most likely future scenarios.
Dmytro condensed his insight and experience of the subject in the speech and since we know how our readers appreciate the gold nuggets of pure knowledge, we’ve prepared an ultra-consumable format for you.
But first, wanted to check if you (or your staff) would like this brochure about TurnKey Pay Later – our solution that will help you automate any kind of embedded financing project.
To start, here’s Dmytro’s overview of the pay later phenomenon in the current economic climate and what new market players need to know before entering it.
It’s clear today that the embedded-lending revolution is here to stay because it brings business owners
- Improved customer loyalty
- An alternative to credit cards
- “Smarter” fully automated processes
- Nimble financing products to take on rivals
- Ability to offer point-of-sale pay later experience in B2C and B2B settings
Some business owners to this day discard BNPL as one of the feds that will go away soon. Well, adoption stats say otherwise.
Online or in-person, 60% of consumers have used a Pay later service, according to C&R Research. Indeed, it’s hard to pay for anything these days, particularly online, without encountering an offer to make payments in installments via PayPal Credit, Afterpay, Affirm, Klarna, and other processors.
And among pay later users, 45% report borrowing to fund purchases at least once a month.
In particular, millennials and younger consumers are firm in their preference for BNPL over credit cards. And on the B2B front, pay later strategies have emerged to flatten seasonality and other friction points, making pay later capabilities increasingly popular among business-equipment providers and other B2B vendors.
And here’s just how much of a differentiator embedded finance can be for product and service providers.
Of course, BNPL isn’t a silver bullet, it’s a tool that can help your business grow if you do it right. The key benefits business owners get from running BNPL in-house are as follows.
Which leads us to the question: how do you embed pay-later lending into your business to maximize returns and not just have another costly tool to maintain and manage?
For the longest time, classic Buy Now Pay Later providers were dominant in consumer finance because the technology was too expensive and complex.
It makes sense that as technology develops, credit moves to the point of sale and the need for third-party lenders diminishes. But at the same time, the need for specialized finance skyrockets.
We can see the implications of embedded tech in Shopify. Millions of successful brands around the world trust the e-commerce giant to sell, ship, and process payments for their wares and services. The company’s gross monthly income — its own sales, not its clients’ — went from $40.9 million in 2018 to $98.8 million in 2021, an increase of 142% in just four years.
Because of all this front-office activity, Shopify knows more about its clients than business banks and other traditional lenders will ever know about theirs. Over time, the e-commerce provider’s insights into its clients’ sales cycles — including inventory levels, supply-chain expenses, and seasonality — can be used to predict how much credit its clients will need, and when they’ll need it.
In this view, Shopify’s 2016 move into commercial lending makes more sense than ever — and, as that unit gathers steam, it should raise concerns on bank boards the world over.
But before we start setting up your TurnKey Pay Later platform, is BNPL even the right choice for your business?
If you do want to offer payment options to clients, the first choice to make is this – will you partner with a BNPL lender or will you do embedded finance in-house?
TurnKey Lender automates all kinds of lending and BNPL businesses all over the globe. Dmytro uses this insight to summarize what benefits you stand to gain from running BNPL in-house.
And here are some of the amazing businesses that run successful pay later programs for their clients in-house, using TurnKey Pay Later platform.
You may be thinking: “But how can I, a retailer/manufacturer/service provider compete with banks and lenders on their home turf?”
Well, we get that question a lot.
Here Dmytro explains why embedded lenders can adapt to marketplace changes way faster than traditional lenders
The key to understanding why it’s time for embedded lenders to take the lead is that the customer’s needs and expectations have changed and we have to adjust too.
BNPL automation platform that gets it done
To summarize, BNPL credit is going to take over a bigger part of the lending space and product and service providers need to at least consider it. Simply because their competitors will sooner or later.
To maximize the results of a pay later program, it’s better to operate and manage it in-house and for that you need a flexible yet highly automated lending platform. We’re talking something as easy to use as Shopify or WooCommerce.
At TurnKey Lender we work a lot with consumer and commercial BNPL providers worldwide. And having automated all possible kinds of pay later programs, we’ve released TurnKey Pay Later, our ultimate solution for B2B and B2C BNPL providers.
1. Grow your revenue
Pay later is here to stay. It’s been proven to help companies grow their margins and revenue, convert more customers, flatten income seasonality, adds a new monetization source, and allows for nurture of an ongoing relationship with the client instead of faceless one-time exchanges with a merchant (aka customer loyalty and lifetime value). If your business doesn’t offer it, you’re just missing out because the competitor will.
2. Keep your revenue in your business
The right way to do BNPL is to keep it in-house. When you delegate your pay later program to a third-party lender, you make less money on each sale, and you give up control over the customer data and lifecycle. Don’t let the BNPL lenders reap all the rewards for your hard work and investments.
3. Control your pay later customer journey
If you’re offering a pay later option, you need to be able to effectively manage it without taking on additional risks or overhead. With TurnKey Lender, you don’t need to be a lending tycoon to make it at least worth it to implement and run a pay later program. You get award-winning smooth interfaces where you can configure the granular details of the application process, credit terms, fees, schedules, credit decisioning, and collections while still getting an incredibly autonomous solution that runs on autopilot.