'Buy Now Pay Later' Breaks Through | PYMNTS.com

And since hating credit isn’t reason enough to deny yourself those amazing sneakers, “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) came along just in time. The point-of-sale “instant credit” solution works on straightforward installments without complex fees or interest to calculate. It used to be called “layaway.” Now the concept is having a digital renaissance, which is extensively detailed in the January 2020 Buy Now, Pay Later Tracker® , a collaboration of PYMNTS and Afterpay . That last part is important, as nearly 80 percent of users of the BNPL service Afterpay used a mobile phone for their transaction during the 2019 shopping season. Afterpay reported $160 million in BNPL sales during Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2019, with five U.S. cities (LA, Chicago, Brooklyn, Houston, Philadelphia) seeing the greatest action. eCommerce lifestyle marketplace and brand aggregator Verishop debuted with BNPL on the payments menu in 2019, and management thinks it’s the ideal service not just for selling, but also for customer experience and satisfaction. With all the upheaval and change in the payments space, some worry that things like BNPL, daily payday withdrawals and instant credit are simply unwanted consumer debt by another name. Legislators in the U.K. and the U.S. are asking questions about these new debt products, but the overall sense is one of consumer choice and financial flexibility – both of which are clearly in demand. A major proving ground for the true power of BNPL is mobile eCommerce, where global shopping cart abandonment hovers (depressingly) at around 86 percent. Retailers, eTailers and brand marketers have all pinned their hopes on BNPL to achieve higher conversions with the click-to-pay convenience and overall seamlessness of the mobile shopping experience.