Zip Eyes Apple Partnership as BNPL Use Grows

Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Zip is reportedly considering a partnership with Apple.

That collaboration would integrate Zip’s installment payments offering with Apple in the U.S., CEO Cynthia Scott told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The company also plans to announce pacts with major U.S. merchants during this quarter, she added.

“We don’t have an integration with Apple at the moment in the U.S., but that’s something that we are in conversation with them about,” Scott said on Tuesday.

Zip also recently announced that merchants using Stripe in the U.S. would be able to offer Zip to customers. Scott said the company is now seeking partnerships with other payments providers.

As the WSJ report noted, Apple introduced a BNPL offering called Apple Pay Later in March of last year, but ceased offering new loans earlier this year, saying it planned to offer installment payment options for Apple Pay through other providers.

Scott told the newspaper her company hopes to also embed its product at the point-of-sale with more major retailers. The company already works with Best Buy, she said, adding that the company expects to announce “significant U.S. merchants” in its September quarter.

Zip’s efforts come amid a time of significant growth in the popularity of BNPL services, fueled chiefly by younger, digitally-engaged consumers.

“This trend is particularly evident during peak shopping seasons; for instance, consumer spending on BNPL transactions reached $17 billion between November and December, marking a 14% increase from the previous year,” PYMNTS wrote recently, noting that it’s a shift that experts say is born out of economic uncertainty.

“This surge indicates a clear shift in consumer preference toward flexible payment options that allow for the deferral of costs without incurring significant interest,” the report added.

In other BNPL news, PYMNTS spoke last week with Alan Koenigsberg, senior vice president and global head, large and middle market commercial solutions, working capital and embedded finance at Visa, about the opportunity for installment payments present for small businesses.

“BNPL winds up being about advocacy — about the small business taking the bull by the horns and saying, ‘I can actually provide myself with incremental working capital by splitting up those transactions’ — and that’s powerful,” he told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster..

“It’s not a loan per se, it’s about those firms conducting procurement and paying the way they want to pay,” he added.