At Apple World developer conference Last month’s big product announcement wasn’t a new iPhone, MacBook, or app. It wasn’t even new technology. No, Apple’s big announcement was the launch of something called Buy Now/Pay Later, or BNPL, in the Apple Store.
BNPL is like Layaway, except the customer immediately becomes the owner of the product. Unlike a credit card, however, payments are fixed and staggered over a short period of time — eight weeks in Apple’s case. There are also no fees if the payments are made as agreed.
Now Apple is the biggest weapon in the BNPL space, which already includes such well-known names as Klarna, Affirm, PayPal and Afterpay. Amazon also has a hybrid BNPL product that stretches the purchase across five payments versus Apple’s four. It may seem counterintuitive – the savings rate increased during the pandemic, as government stimulus checks arrived in the mail and consumers canceled expensive vacation plans – but the recent economic downturn, coupled with record inflationhas led to a surge in interest in extending the paycheck.
However, according to the online coupon site VoucherBirds, which recently surveyed 200 companies, 82 percent of retailers still do not offer a BNPL option. Although they probably will be soon, as a recent report published by shows Global Payments found that the number of merchants working with a BNPL service like Afterpay or Klarna has more than tripled since 2019.
“As consumers and businesses continue to adapt to new ways of shopping, we believe new shopping patterns will continue to emerge that make the way we consume more convenient,” observes CouponBirds. The company says younger customers have been particularly responsive to BNPL, perhaps because of its prominence on e-commerce sites and fast fashion stores. CouponBirds’ own research shows two-thirds of Americans are more interested in BNPL than they were before the pandemic,…
