Afterpay to offer installment payments to Stripe, Squarespace

Dive Brief:

Afterpay and Stripe have teamed up to provide Afterpay's payment service to Stripe sellers. Current and new merchants can offer Afterpay's services to customers, which lets them pay their purchases down in four installments, according to a Wednesday press release.
Sellers can start accepting Afterpay transactions without an application, onboarding or underwriting process. The two companies will also provide installment payments to e-commerce platforms using Squarespace.
Afterpay is currently available to Stripe merchants in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, and will soon be available to sellers in Canada. The Squarespace integration is available to customers in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, and will also be available to Canadian customers soon.

Dive Insight:

With more consumers buying goods online, and also more struggling financially, retailers are looking for more ways to ease the path to purchase. Buy now, pay later services have become popular recently for that reason.

Being able to pay in installments could draw customers looking for an alternative payment option, the companies noted in their release.

"We've seen strong demand from users around the world for flexible payment options, and this partnership gives businesses on Stripe an effective tool for capturing more sales and reaching new customers," Noah Pepper, Stripe's business lead for APAC, said in a statement.

Afterpay's partnership with Stripe comes after the installment payments platform began offering its service through Google Pay and Apple Pay wallets last October. Its relationships with retailers appear to be paying off. Last month, the platform announced that it had experienced a 30% increase in average basket size for U.S. customers during the 2020 holiday season.

Elsewhere, other installment payments providers are vying for a share of the market. Last September, PayPal introduced its own short-term installment plans for U.S. customers. In January, Affirm made at least $1.2 billion from its initial public offering after raising the price per share from its initial range. And earlier this week, Klarna collaborated with Cosmopolitan Magazine to co-host its second annual virtual shopping event, "Hauliday by Cosmo x Klarna."