‘Buy Now, Pay Later-BNPL’, it is a term that has been playing a vital role and got penetrated in the market at a pace while Covid-19 pandemic. It has provided a new digital payments landscape in India. Traditional banking players like ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have emerged in this arena wisely through introducing ICICI PayLater and FlexiPay respectively, which will have its impact over financial inclusion also.
As per Global Payments Report by Worldpay, it has been estimated that BNPL will capture approx 9% of the total e-commerce market share by the end of 2024. BNPL players are benefitting customers of online platforms by providing short term-credit, where they have to pay little or no interest for online buys. Flipkart, Amazon, Byjus and Paytm are some of the top consumer shopping internet companies that facilitating those segments of consumers who are interested in opting for paying later option during their purchases.
Industry Insiders are saying that India’s annual BNPL market size has increased to $2 billion in less than 18 months during 2019 from few million dollars. Around 33 BNPL-startups are working as platform facilitators which are payment services providers as per Traxcn. This will have a positive impact soon over the Indian Financial Inclusion. One of the main benefits is that it enables one to buy immediately that cannot be afforded.
According to Bernstein, “the pay-later market processes around $15 bn of payments volume currently and will rise exponentially as consumer credit, becomes more integrated with digital payments processes.”
