Australia-based BNPL provider Zip has welcomed the Option 2 regulatory reform announced by the Australian Treasury department. According to Zip’s officials, the company has been a vocal advocate of fit-for-purpose regulation for their industry since 2019 and they support the decision to further strengthen the BNPL regulatory framework proposed by Treasury as Option 2.

For the Australia-based company, Option 2 means ‘business as usual’ as they have had an Australian Credit Licence (ACL) since inception (2013) and their Zip Money product is fully regulated under the NCCPA – they operate their Zip Pay product in a similar fashion. Careful on who receives credit Zip has already been conducting identity, credit, and affordability checks on its customers, and has done so since 2013, and would already be compliant with any new requirements. As a result, Zip has good visibility over a customer’s financial circumstances prior to signing them up.

The company generate less than 1% of its revenue from late fees and 0.2% of its customers are in hardship. Zip’s executives added that with BNPL now well and truly established and some 7 million Australians adopting better and simpler ways to pay, this will provide clarity and consistency across the sector, deliver confidence to stakeholders and build on the already very high levels of trust they have with their customers. The Australian BNPL provider looks forward to further engaging with Treasury and Government on next steps, knowing that Option 2 provides a sensible balance between consumer protection and minimum standards, whilst also promoting competition and innovation.

Zip rolls out unified platform for procurement In May 2023, Zip has announced the launch of a unified platform for procurement, consolidating the tools and processes needed for the end-to-end procurement lifecycle. Following the introduction of Intake-to-Pay, Zip looks to extend its Intake-to-Procure platform to provide advanced Procure-to-Pay capabilities, including purchase order (PO) management, accounts payable (AP) automation and global B2B payments functionality. Businesses are set to benefit from comprehensive spend orchestration in a single platform, resulting in increased control and visibility over spend, improved AP efficiency and support for compliant purchasing processes.

Organisations are enabled to leverage Zip Intake-to-Pay to decrease purchasing cycle times, minimise the time spent towards manual procurement operations and redirect employees’ time towards more strategic activities. This is believed to better employee adoption of pre-approved spending, which ultimately helps drive savings. Additionally, customisable workflows enable accurate tracking and matching of both POs and invoices, resulting in increased internal efficiencies and improved accuracy.

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