Revolut developing ‘buy now pay later’ product
Fintech firm Revolut is preparing to launch a ‘buy now, pay later’ feature, becoming a rival of ClearPay and Klarna.
The company will allow users to spread the cost of in-store and online purchases over a period of time, chief executive Nikolay Storonsky has said.
“Simply a button which you switch on and then your card becomes a buy now pay later product,” the fintech boss told the Evening Standard.
“Instead of paying upfront everything, you pay a third and then in two weeks time we charge you a third and then another third,” Storonsky added.
Revolut said the products were in very early development and would be likely to be trialled across some European markets next year.
The fintech became Britain’s most valuable private tech company in history after investors valued it at $33bn as part of a $800m funding round in July.
Some 5m Brits have used ‘buy now, pay later’ since the start of the pandemic as the size of the UK market quadrupled last year to reach £2.7bn, according to the FCA.
Klarna was the first firm to debut the payment method in 2005 and now serves more than 14m customers and over 13,000 retailers in the UK.
There have been warnings that consumers could be at risk of falling foul of the payment method and rack up huge debts without realising.