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Modulr glossary

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is a consumer finance model that allows customers to make purchases and pay for them in instalments over time. BNPL services are often interest-free but may include late fees. The model has gained traction in e-commerce, travel, and retail due to its availability at point of sale and checkout and its offer of flexible payment options. While BNPL is primarily a consumer product, some B2B lending products are presented as ‘BNPL for business’ and adhere to similarly staged repayment plans. Embedded payments are important here because they enable rapid access to credit once a BNPL decision has been made and generate the scalable architecture to send and receive repayments regardless of the transaction value.

Applications

E-commerce:

Reduces fraud in online card payments by verifying the cardholder's identity

Banking and fintech:

Helps issuers and payment providers comply with Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements.

Advantages

  • Enhanced security: Reduces unauthorised transactions by verifying that the genuine account holder is authorising the payment
  • Fraud prevention: Helps reduce chargebacks related to fraud.

Challenges

  • User Experience: Additional authentication steps can cause friction and increase checkout abandonment
  • Implementation complexity: Requires integration with card schemes and issuer systems.

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