PayPal’s “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) platform volumes were five times higher on this year’s Black Friday than in the same period in 2020, the company’s chief executive told the Reuters NEXT conference at this year. Friday (3).
PayPal launched its BNPL platform, a growing and increasingly competitive credit niche, in August of last year.
BNPL services, which allow consumers to parcel their purchases without a credit card, exploded into the pandemic with the growth of e-commerce. But the model has attracted the attention of regulators, with concerns that it will lead to greater debt, especially among younger people.
“We saw a 400% annual increase in our BNPL volumes last Black Friday,” said Dan Schulman, president of PayPal. He said more than 9 million people have used the service.
“We had over 1 million users for the first time in November,” he said.
A survey in September showed that a third of US consumers who used BNPL services had delayed one or more installments.
According to Schulman, the scale of PayPal’s customer base allows them to responsibly deliver the service. “We have more than 400 million people on our platform. We know consumers and merchants and we know when someone can borrow responsibly,” he said.
“We have one of the highest approval ratings and one of the lowest default rates in the sector,” he added.
Schulman declined to comment on PayPal’s interest in Pinterest after news that the payments company had considered buying the social media platform for $45 billion in what would be one of the biggest tech deals in history.
But he said that, with $20 billion in cash equivalents, the company is open to businesses big and small.
“When I think about mergers and acquisitions or PayPal’s strategy, I try to think broadly about where the world is going,” he said.
He also stated that companies of interest to the company would be those in the areas of interconnection payments, consumer financial services and purchasing tools.
Reference: CNN Brasil

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