Alternative payment methods have emerged as a topic that’s become tied to the 2021 holiday season, and now Mastercard has announced the further expansion of its Mastercard Installments buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) program, further energizing the conversation.
That isn’t all that’s new on the alternative payment front. Amazon is expanding acceptance of PayPal’s Venmo payment system, and BNPL operator Affim has developed a marketing campaign designed to explain alternative payment services to consumers and encourage them to use such services.
HomePage News in a special report this week examined the growing potential at retail for flexible BNPL services.
In the United States, Mastercard Installments is adding American Airlines, CSI, Fiserv and TSYS, a global payments company to its system. In Australia, BNLP providers hummgroup and Limepay are adopting Mastercard’s open loop model approach, the financial services company stated. Mastercard Installments was developed to make BNPL available to consumers and merchants worldwide, enabling banks, lenders, fintechs and wallets to quickly offer a variety of flexible installment options to consumers, including the zero percent interest, pay-in-four BHLP model, without resource-consuming merchant integration.
“Our diverse set of new partners demonstrate the versatility, flexibility and agility of our BNPL program,” said Craig Vosburg, chief product officer, Mastercard. “Mastercard Installments offers a digitally focused way to pay today and tomorrow, delivered through consumers’ most trusted relationships with their banks and other lenders, at merchants of their choice. The program’s unique, open loop model provides lenders, merchants and consumers alike the ability to enjoy the benefits of BNPL purchasing with the security and consumer protections they’ve come to expect from Mastercard.”
On another front, PayPal announced that Amazon customers in the U.S. will have the option to pay with Venmo for purchases on Amazon.com and the Amazon mobile shopping app next year. Venmo’s more than 80 million users in the U.S. will be able to tap its payment system at Amazon checkouts using funding methods that include their linked bank accounts.
Affirm, for its part, unveiled Holiday Smart, a marketing campaign that identifies what it describes as the mistakes people make during the holiday season and how paying at their own pace with Affirm can be a smart thing they do. The campaign illustrates a few of the stressful and regrettable “gotcha” situations that people may find themselves in when it comes to financing holiday purchases, especially when it comes to fine print. As part of the campaign, Affirm is asking consumers to submit creative, dramatic or comedic readings of everyday fine print, anything from what comes with credit card agreements to what’s printed on the labels attached to food and beauty products. Participants can win one of 100 $10,000 prizes for the best fine print reading, originality, creativity, quality and entertainment value.
