Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) continues to make inroads as a growing option for consumers looking for more flexibility in making online payments. Affirm, one of the most prominent BNPL providers in the world, announced this week it has partnered with Stripe. Merchants that use Stripe to enable online payment acceptance can now offer their customers the capability of paying for e-commerce purchases in installments through Affirm.
Stripe executives touted the effect of Affirm’s BNPL solution on average order value and conversion in the announcement.
“Businesses that offer Affirm at checkout have reported as much as 85 percent higher average order values compared to other payment methods, and our new partnership delivers a powerful growth engine to the millions of businesses and platforms that use Stripe,” said Affirm’s chief revenue officer, Geoff Kott.
While BNPL has achieved astonishing popularity in the short time it has been widely available—especially during Covid lockdowns when e-commerce exploded but many people were out of work—fraudsters have used its quick growth as an opportunity.
A recent report from data aggregator and credit bureau Experian predicted that 2022 would see a sharp rise in fraud targeting BNPL transactions, especially identity theft and synthetic identity fraud. Card Not Present also reported last year on a different kind of attack targeting merchants that were early adopters of BNPL.
