This week’s topic is extremely interesting and gaining momentum. COVID has changed consumers’ behavior in ways we are slowly getting used to, and Ryan Boonstra is here to talk more about the trend of buy now, pay later.

Hosted by our Head of Marketing, Horatiu Mitu, this session turned out to be a very insightful conversation between 2 great minds.

Check it out!

Who is Ryan Boonstra?

Ryan Boonstra is the Account Executive of Sezzle. He is a results-driven and sales-centric individual at heart, with extensive experience driving value and generating recurring revenue in a variety of industries including eCommerce/fintech (Sezzle), web development (Blacksmith), and CPG (General Mills). Over the years he has focused on strategic positioning and B2B solution selling, constantly working to improve organizations’ business development, selling, strategic direction, and prospecting functions.

Key takeaways from this episode

COVID has accelerated the already rapid growth of BNPL

We put ourselves in a pretty fortunate position where we were – I don’t want to call it pandemic proof because I don’t think any business can really say that – but for us, we were really positioned to take advantage of a lot of issues that are happening financially.

Many people have lost their jobs or have been furloughed or the small businesses have been hammered. So they’re looking for new and unique and flexible ways to pay that are going to come with the drawbacks of traditional methods like credit cards, high-interest rates or for whatever reason taking out personal loans where the Fed might cut interest rates to zero to what I think 2023, but you’re still not getting personal loans less than 10 percent interest.

For us, I think having that positioning and just being able to assist and in times of need has certainly helped – if you take a look at some of the anecdotes back from when COVID first hit – we actually allowed traditionally one free reschedule for installments, which is a big differentiator for us.

But when COVID first hit, we gave additional reschedules for free to shoppers and the reception was tremendous. If you look at our trust pilot people talking about “I lost my job and I was really worried about having to be able to make these installment payments on top of my rent, on top of whatever it may be.” And for us, [it meant] being able to come in and say “Hey, we have an agile tech solution. We can just add this feature and make your life a hell of a lot easier.”

The shift towards eCommerce and the power of repeat usage

During this pandemic, we’ve had a major increase in late adopters of Internet technology. Especially for people who are new to being online, to making transactions in e-commerce stores, this extra flexibility and ease of making transactions are going to be very important. 

A lot of it is due to the repeat usage. If you go on a site and you see SALES, that’s an enticing offering, maybe you’ll check it out. It’s a very quick and simple checkout flow so why not? There are really no drawbacks. If that was the end and they occasionally use the products, OK., so be it. There’s not going to be a lot of growth.

But in July we hit our 19th straight month of improvement in repeat usage percentage. It hit 88 percent in July. So our users aren’t just using this as checking it out once and thinking that is a nice product to use. Cool, back to my credit card. They’re on it again, they’re on sezzle.com looking for new brands and trying to find other exciting sites and retailers that they can use a solution on. And they’re doing it! 88 percent repeat usage is not an insignificant statistic and 19 straight months of improvement – we’re going to continue to see that. 

Consumers want multiple payment options

I see a lot of similarities between this [eCommerce] market and how highly competitive it is compared to the advent of the credit card networks where now you go on really any large or really any online site, you have the ability to pay with the major four players: Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex, and I see this solution or this idea of buy now, pay later slowly transitioning into the same.

We’re actually seeing some power users, basically like the top 10 percent of the buy now, pay later solution are users who tend to make up around 40 percent of the total volume. These are users that are really heavily relying on solutions like this. They don’t just use one provider, they use two, three, four, because they know the value and really it’s based on what retailers are these guys offered on. So they’re hopping around from provider to provider.

We have quite a few dual installs with some of our competitors, like Afterpay and QuadPay, and we have no issue with that. We continue to spread this message of flexibility and provide the ability to make these payments over time without interest and do it so easily that you get approved in one to two seconds. 

There’s really no downside to offering a multitude of options. Just like with a credit card: you select a premium credit card because of the rewards. Providers like us are now coming out with reward solutions or we’ve got our free reschedule. So, shoppers are going to continue to rely on the providers that they value maybe a little bit more. But as we get more developed and entrenched in the retail market around the world, I think people are going to really start to ask for that flexibility and a multitude of options on checkouts. 

You cannot miss out on our next episode of the eCommerce Growth Show!

Kunle Campbell, eCommerce Advisor and Host of 2X eCommerce Podcast, will be here to talk about Black Friday & Cyber Monday Preparedness.