PayPal Expands BNPL ‘Pay In 3’ Option To The UK

PayPal is rolling out a new buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution called PayPal Pay in 3 in the U.K., according to a press release.

The solution, similar to the company’s Pay in 4 program in the U.S. and the Paiement in 4x in France, introduced earlier this year, will let customers pay for items in three monthly installments.

The release says Pay in 3 will help businesses boost checkout conversion, revenue and customer loyalty. The payment installments will be interest-free and backed by the security of PayPal’s increasing options for Pay Later solutions.

Pay in 3 will give customers options to pay for items between £45 and £2,000 with seamless automatic repayments as an option, the release says. The program will also appear in the customer’s PayPal wallet, which will give them a way to manage payments online or on their mobile apps.

The release says there was a 39 percent increase year over year of people utilizing BNPL services in the U.K. in 2019, with the trend expected to double in use by 2023. Rob Harper, U.K. Director of Enterprise Accounts at PayPal, said the coronavirus pandemic had upped the number of people shopping online, and that the BNPL solution had been appealing for people trying to be fiscally responsible.

He said the upcoming holiday season, as people begin to shop for gifts and other such things, would likely come with more of a surge in spending.

“We will continue to support U.K. retailers and businesses through these challenging times by helping them adapt to changing consumer behaviors around how they shop and pay – especially in the lead up to Black Friday and Christmas,” he said, according to the release.

John Rainey, chief financial officer and executive vice president of global customer operations at PayPal, told Karen Webster recently that the important thing for a business operating during the pandemic is to adapt quickly, as PayPal previously did by offering SMB loans through the Paycheck Protection Program and implementing work from home solutions as many companies have done since March.