i2c ties up with Visa for BNPL solution
i2c, one of the leading providers of payment and digital banking solutions, has announced a partnership with Visa for providing its customers with a buy-now-pay-later option at point-of-sale.
The BNPL space has received a lot of interest from users and this has, in turn, led to interest from investors as well as the payment companies, big and small, compete with each other to gain the upper hand in this space. The new generation of payments platform users seems to prefer to have the option of paying in installments at some later point of time rather than having to pay for a product, especially a high-value one, right away. This has been the main trigger for the growth of the BNPL industry.
“Customers love the flexibility of being able to pay over time with installments, as evidenced by the rapid growth in the space,” said Mary Kay Bowman, global head of buyer, seller, core, and platform products at Visa. “At Visa, we’re working with partners like i2c to accelerate the distribution of more BNPL payment options for consumers, issuers, and merchants around the world.”
i2c would be looking to integrate Visa in such a way that its clients would be able to offer cardholders, in their platform, an option at the checkout where they can convert the bulk payment into a BNPL payment which the users can then pay over a period of 3 or 4 months. The users can either choose this option or can go ahead and make the full payment as well.
“BNPL solutions have emerged as a must-have capability for both card issuers and merchants across the globe. We are thrilled to partner with Visa and to add Visa Installments to our existing BNPL product offering for our issuers and their cardholders,” said Ava Kelly, Global Head of Products of Silicon Valley-based i2c, a global Visa Ready and Fast Track member.
The global BNPL market is expected to grow by 10-15 times by 2025 and this is one of the reasons why the financial firms and their investor are flocking into this space. Paypal has already launched its BNPL services and Visa/Mastercard is also active in this space with Apple expected to follow suit shortly. The entry of major companies is likely to put a lot of pressure on the smaller startups who need to build a niche market for themselves.
