Business management platform Vagaro and automated clearing house (ACH) payments and risk management company Certegy have partnered on a buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution that will allows beauty, wellness and fitness businesses to offer payment installment options to their clients.
With the new Vagaro Pay Later service, consumers can pay in installments over several weeks, without interest, while business owners will be paid in full the following business day with no risk, the companies said Thursday (Nov. 17) in a press release.
“At Vagaro, we are always looking for ways to help small businesses grow,” Fred Helou, founder and CEO of Vagaro, said in the release. “With the growing popularity of buy now, pay later services, we saw the perfect opportunity to give our business owners another tool to increase sales and revenue just in time for the busy holiday season.”
The partnership will integrate Certegy’s white-label BNPL solution into Vagaro’s app, enabling the 70,000 businesses that use the app to opt in to the service and offer payment installment options to their 20 million clients, according to the release.
When a client submits an installment plan for a service or product, Certegy manages the scheduling, validation and transfers, the release stated.
“This is the evolution of BNPL, and it begins with innovations that prioritize small businesses,” Certegy Vice President of Strategy and Commercial Development Greg Lipari said in the release
The Vagaro platform began as a way for businesses to schedule appointments but has grown into a suite of tools for beauty and wellness businesses of all types that enable scheduling, payments, marketing and even a physical point of sale (POS), Helou told PYMNTS when interviewed for the “Beauty and Wellness Digital Payments Tracker.”
“We realized [that] to create this marketplace, we needed to give [businesses] what they really need, which is a way to manage their employees [and] their schedules, [as well as] sell products, manage inventory, sell gift certificates, packages and memberships,” Helou said in the interview posted in May.
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