Most shoppers worldwide keen on ‘buy now, pay later’ loans

Most shoppers plan to use “buy now, pay later” loans in the next couple of years, according to a report that highlights the surge in new financial products that sidestep the world’s biggest lenders.

A poll of more than 6,300 people globally found that 20 per cent have already taken out buy-now, pay-later loans, while about 60 per cent think they will try the service within two years. This compares to about 45 per cent who said they will use cryptocurrencies soon, according to a report published Thursday by technology consultancy Capgemini.

Fintech firms such as Klarna and Afterpay have grown into multibillion-dollar companies by offering customers the option to pay in installments when they shop online. Buy-now, pay-later specialists have already diverted as much as $10bn in annual revenue away from banks, according to research in July by McKinsey.

This boom has attracted scrutiny from regulators, who are concerned about money-laundering and the risk of unaffordable borrowing. Meanwhile, traditional financial giants including Goldman Sachs Group and Mastercard Inc. are trying to muscle in on the market.

About two-thirds of bank executives polled by Capgemini said challengers such as PayPal Holdings, Stripe and Square were bigger competition than long-established lenders.

Overall, non-cash payments rose a meager 8 per cent in 2020 after years of double-digit expansion were slowed by the pandemic, Capgemini said. Still, the report predicts that the rebounding global economy will fuel demand for alternatives such as cryptocurrency, wearable payments and digital wallets.