As consumers’ price anxieties make them hesitant to purchase from delivery aggregators, given the high fees these companies charge, DoorDash is turning to buy now, pay later (BNPL) to target these concerned consumers.
On Tuesday (March 8), the company announced a partnership with Melbourne, Australia-based financial technology company Afterpay to offer BNPL on all orders in the fintech company’s home country.
“We are proud to be partnering with Afterpay and leading the way in Buy now, Pay later payment options for delivery apps in Australia,” DoorDash Australia General Manager Rebecca Burrows said in a statement. “The partnership allows us to offer app users additional convenience when ordering through DoorDash, giving them the option to split their payments over time.”
DoorDash customers now see the Afterpay option when they check out in the delivery aggregator’s app, and the aggregator is incentivizing adoption with three free months of its DashPass subscription when consumers sign up to use the BNPL option.
By the Numbers
If U.S. businesses are any indication, a significant portion of restaurants are interested in offering their customers BNPL options, according to data from PYMNTS’ Main Street Index.
Findings from the January edition of the study, the Main Street Merchant Index: Optimism Amid Inflation Edition, created in collaboration with Melio, which drew from a survey of 765 business owners on Main Street U.S.A., revealed that while only 8% of food, entertainment and accommodation businesses currently offer BNPL, a full 25% plan to implement BNPL in the next year.
Read more: Small Restaurants Jump on BNPL Bandwagon, Study Reveals
Additionally, research from PYMNTS’ September study The Second-Chance Consumer: How Buy Now, Pay Later Payments Create New Merchant Opportunities, created in collaboration with Sezzle, found that 29 million U.S. consumers had used BNPL for at least one online purchase within the previous year.
Get the study: How Buy Now, Pay Later Payments Create New Merchant Opportunities
What Insiders Are Saying
“Making sure that buy now, pay later is reflected in your omnichannel strategy as a merchant makes sure that your ecosystem is more meaningful, where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts,” Janessa LaCombe, senior program manager at Sezzle, told PYMNTS in a February interview. “Adding [the BNPL] option increases engagement across all channels and gives a true omnichannel shopping experience.”
Related news: Buy Now, Pay Later Goes Full Circle With Re-Focus on In-store Transactions
For now, BNPL options are mostly offered for retail purchases, but those in the space expect that the payment method will be offered in non-retail categories in the near future.
“Anything that gets back to aligning expenditure with cash flow I think is good for consumers,” PayPal Vice President of Global Pay Later Products Greg Lisiewski said in a PYMNTS TV interview in October. “And you’ll start to see these solutions penetrate other non-retail verticals but big spend categories.”
See more: BNPL Is ‘Humongously Important’ Tool for Non-Retail Merchants