Online retailers who use Stripe payments processing will soon be able to offer their customers a buy now, pay later option, thanks to a partnership with the BNPL provider Zip. That’s one of several high-profile collaborations the BNPL company has worked out in the past year.

Zip, which is based in Australia and has a regional headquarters in New York City, has a big presence in the United States, letting users pay for goods and services in four installments over six weeks.

The partnership with large digital processor Stripe, which was announced last week, comes on the heels of similar partnerships for Zip with card network Mastercard and tech behemoth Google Pay.

“This partnership we announced matches something we're already doing in Australia,” George Eliopoulos, Zip’s chief commercial officer, said in an interview. “Stripe's platform will now have Zip as one of the (payment) options.”

Eliopoulos said Zip is going through a “testing and integration” period to make sure the BNPL company’s product will work with Stripe’s payment platform.

As soon as that stage is finished “we’ll be ready to go,” he said.

“We’re anticipating having it launched by the end of the year,” Eliopoulos said.

Zip works with both online merchants and brick and mortar stores, but Eliopoulos said “this particular partnership will be for online merchants.”

The announcement marks the latest in a number of high profile partnerships for Zip, which is a smaller player in the crowded BNPL space that includes fintechs like Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay and Sezzle.

Those companies have struck a number of partnerships too. Affirm, for example, said Tuesday that customers who book rooms on Hotels.com can use the buy now, pay later company to settle their bill in installments. That builds on a tie Affirm already had with that hotel booking firm’s parent company, Expedia Group.

Zip announced a partnership with Mastercard last year that lets card holders use buy now, pay later.

And in December Google added Zip to Google Pay, the search giant’s digital wallet.

Eliopoulos said Zip is likely not finished pursuing collaborations with major payments companies. However, he could not mention any by name.

Partnerships between payments companies are generally intended to broaden the distribution of their product, he said.

“We’ll be following a very similar paradigm,” Eliopoulos said. 

By Patrick Cooley on Aug 21, 2024
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