Ecommerce marketplace Flipkart on Thursday said over 6 million users availed its buy now, pay later (BNPL) service—Flipkart Pay Later—in the last seven months.
The company said it is seeing strong adoption of its credit facility and an upward trend in monthly sign-ups, having doubled the number of users availing of the service in the last seven months. The service is strongly being adopted by users as compared to traditional payment alternatives.
The ecommerce platform offers its customers credit up to Rs 1 lakh, depending on their credit profile. Customers can shop any number of times throughout the month and pay the total bill amount in part within 30 days or through EMIs.
Repeat purchase categories such as grocery, lifestyle, general merchandise and home saw major traction for 30-day credit while longer-tenured EMI options were mostly availed in high-value categories such as mobiles, consumer electronics, and large appliances.
This payment option currently processes over 3 million transactions monthly, 90 percent of which come from repeat customers.
“Interestingly, 45 percent of customers prefer to make purchases with BNPL options even if they have a credit card owing to the convenience that BNPL provides. Due to the rising demand, Flipkart Pay Later has recently expanded its offerings to provide credit upto Rs 1 lakh and is available on Flipkart and Myntra platforms and plans to expand its offerings further,” said Dheeraj Aneja, SVP & Head – Fintech and Payments Group, Flipkart.
Over the past few years, e-commerce marketplaces like Flipkart and Amazon have been doubling down on their BNPL or embedded lending option for consumers, including MSMEs and retailers, by partnering with banks and fintechs. Flipkart is facilitating such transactions through subsidiary Flipkart Advanz, while Amazon has partnered with non-banking financial company (NBFC) Capital Float.
As per a report by Redseer, the BNPL market is nascent in India, valued at $3-3.5 billion that could grow 15-fold over the next five years to $45-50 billion.
