The Future of Installments: How Next Generation Solutions Can Boost Your Business

Australia’s Afterpay took the world by storm in 2014 thanks in part to its appeal to younger consumers, ease of use, and ability to increase sales and loyalty for retailers. Since then, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) moved into the mainstream and is widely offered as a feature embedded within credit cards. If you have a credit card in your physical or digital wallet, you have BNPL. 

All major banks in Australia now have an embedded issuer-based instalment offering for credit cards. While each offering provides a slightly different product experience, but there are standard features included in them all: 

• During transaction processing, you can split single transactions over a certain amount into four to six weekly or fortnightly repayments. 
• Post settlement, you can split transaction over a certain amount into four to six weekly or fortnightly repayments. 
• Within your statement, you can split transactions or groups of transactions into single monthly repayment plans over three, six, or twelve months, limited to nine plans at any one time within an account. 
  

How did market conditions influence the major banks’ decisions?   

Findings from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s sixth Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) that ran from October to early December 2022 show a clear pattern of BNPL usage: 

• Growing Popularity: BNPL services have experienced substantial growth, with almost one-third of Australians using them in the past year. This represents almost an 8% increase from 2019. 
• BNPL is being used by younger generations: BNPL usage is particularly prominent among younger Australians, with over 40% of those aged 18–39 using BNPL services.  
• Increased usage across all ages: While younger age groups lead in BNPL usage, there’s a noticeable increase across all age groups since 2019.  

An IDC research paper commissioned by E6 stated that issuer-led deferred payments have grown significantly in Asia Pacific and are predicted to reach over $200 billion by 2028 from $21 billion in 2022, representing a 46.7% annual growth on average. 

The data is clear. With consistent growth in volume, transaction size and usage across all demographics, BNPL is here to stay in Australia for the foreseeable future. 

What benefits are you missing out on if you don’t offer BNPL?  

• Customer acquisition: BNPL is no longer the new thing, it is expected, widely understood, and used by younger consumers. It’s at the top of their wish list. 
• Improved customer loyalty: In a world where interest rates are soaring, giving your customers the flexibility to repay transactions over several weeks or months provides them with a level of security and certainty for their budgeting. This not only fosters loyalty but also empowers them to use BNPL to pay for essential expenses, such as school fees, utilities, and those surprise repairs that pop up when you least expect them. 
• Increased main bank activity: Keep your customers in house by providing them the offerings they want. Why would they go anywhere else? 
• New revenue models: See your customer demographics expand and top the charts. Try new pricing models that send your bottom line through the roof.  

What are your next steps? 

Legacy technology was built for a different time. Making any changes to it is costly and time consuming. While the technology is secure and robust, it was not designed with modern cloud services in mind. Also, much of the payments capability is outsourced, leaving you in a situation where s lack the knowledge, people, technological capability, or internal funding may prevent you from making necessary, large scale changes. 

Next generation banking platforms are built using API-first principals to maximize the advantages of robust cloud infrastructure. Modern technology now sits elegantly alongside your existing tech stack, enabling new banking products and experiences like BNPL. Modern technology makes a good situation even better for your existing and trusted partners and customers.

With only a light integration required, you can offer a whole new suite of products for your customers, including instalments. 

What does the next generation of instalments look like? 

With modern and flexible technology there are boundless possibilities within reach of your customers. You are no longer constrained with typical product attributes hard coded into older platforms. E6 instalments offers the following capabilities among many others: 

• Ability to simulate an instalment plan prior to purchasing so you can see what your repayments will be. 
• Flexibility to choose your own terms of repayment from weekly or monthly over any term. 
• Flexibility to run as many plans as you need within your single credit limit.  
• Flexibility to run revolving balances, interest free instalment plans, and interest-bearing plans within the same credit limit. 
• Ability to provide instalment offers and capabilities for non-card transactions, for example, NPP, using existing card limits or new non-card personal credit limits. 
• Flexibility to provide merchant or category-specific interest and repayment terms to entice certain types of buying activity, enhancing relationships with merchants and loyalty partners. 

As an E6 partner you have the platform to offer any variation of product that uniquely suits your customers or strategy.  

Episode Six (E6) is a global provider of enterprise-grade payment processing and digital ledger infrastructure for banks and companies looking to offer payments to their customers. E6 delivers the innovative capabilities needed to compete with disruptors by augmenting existing infrastructures. Flexibility, adaptability and resilience are built into the core of E6’s TRITIUM® platform ensuring clients maintain a market-leading position. E6 operates globally across 40 countries with an expanding team located in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. Investors include HSBC, Mastercard, SBI Investment Co., Ltd., Anthos Capital and Avenir. 

Contact E6 today