Younger shoppers are emerging as the sustainability generation and inspiring circular economy solutions as they increasingly influence how businesses design their strategies and allocate capital.
According to data provided by U.K.-based FinTech firm Twig, almost 60% of millennial and Gen Z consumers already consider the resale value of a new item at the time of purchase, and for more than 30% of these young shoppers, reselling old items to fund new lifestyle goods is their go-to shopping style.
Building on this growing trend and aiming to redefine the concept of ownership by increasing the recirculation of goods, the London-based company has gone beyond the average banking services offered by FinTech firms to give younger consumers the possibility to cash out and offload fashion and electronic products they no longer want and get instant valuation for those assets.
“If you’re happy with the price, you can simply swipe right, and money moves into your account immediately before you even ship the items. [We’ve made] it as easy for someone to convert an iPhone 11 Pro to dollars as it is to convert pounds to dollars,” Geri Cupi, the firm’s CEO, told PYMNTS in an interview.
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To further help younger consumers build a sustainable lifestyle, the new generation FinTech has recently partnered with Milan-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) startup Scalapay to enable Scalapay customers to resell fashion and electronic products and get paid instantly by Twig.
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For environmentally conscious Gen Z and millennial consumers, making a purchase with the guarantee that they will be able to resell that instantly at any point in time makes the purchase experience even more attractive, and can be viewed as why the solution is catching on fast with shoppers, Cupi noted.
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In less than a year of launch, the young startup has already had over a million app installations and recorded over 500,000 users. And earlier this year, the firm announced a $35 million Series A round aimed at boosting its Europe and US expansion and accelerating its delivery of the Web 3.0 green payment infrastructure for its users.
Tectonic Shift In Merchant Behavior
According to Cupi, young shoppers’ desire for sustainable, eco-friendly products and services is driving a “tectonic” shift in how merchants behave as many have added circular payment solutions that are kinder and gentler to the environment.
“After our users cash out products, they’re often using some of this income to buy more experiences or pay for tuition, and it doesn’t get more circular than enabling consumers to buy new experiences or items by using their old items instead of cash,” he noted.
While this is helping consumers give their old products a second life, from a merchant perspective, he said it is their way of enabling consumers to live a more circular lifestyle without negatively impacting their bottom lines.
The FinTech firm has also launched a business-to-business (B2B) initiative called For the Earth by Twig to help businesses further improve their sustainability practices by supporting corporations and their employees in achieving carbon neutrality.
As Cupi said: “We want to give back to the ecosystem and make it possible for consumers and businesses to behave in a more sustainable manner.”
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