The white-hot buy now, pay later market got even hotter Tuesday as Visa Inc. announced an expansion of its Visa Ready program with Visa Ready for BNPL. More than 20 partners are now live on Visa Ready for BNPL, including ACI Worldwide Inc., CyberSource Corp., FIS Inc., Marqeta Inc., and TSYS Inc.
The Visa Ready for BNPL partner program, which is a vertical within the overall Visa Ready Program, will fast-track implementation and scalability of Visa’s BNPL offering, Arvind Ronta, global head of BNPL/installment for Visa, says in a blog post. “Visa clients will have access to a diverse ecosystem of pre-vetted partners ready to support various aspects of a BNPL offering for both issuers and merchants,” Ronta says.
The Visa Ready program is aimed at helping technology companies build and launch payment programs that are found to meet Visa’s global standards concerning security and functionality. It provides certification guidelines and access to Visa products and marketing expertise.
Expansion of Visa Ready for BNPL comes at a time when BNPL volume is being valued as a $1.6 trillion opportunity globally and is expected to keep growing, according to Canopy Servicing, a loan-management and servicing platform provider and Visa Ready for BNPL partner.
Canopy’s platform enables BNPL installment payments on cards. As a result, BNPL lenders and card program managers can track balances and transactions for each borrower and for all the products used by that borrower. Lenders can offer BNPL financing through any merchant.
“By working together, Canopy’s platform and Visa’s portfolio of solutions empower lenders and the merchants they serve to offer consumers financing that matches their budget,” Canopy chief executive Matt Bivons says in a prepared statement.
“Obtaining an installment loan used to be an uncertain, paper-heavy process that involved filling out forms and waiting for approval,” Bivons adds. “Servicing those loans was far from the tap-and-swipe, mobile-friendly, automated world of today. When BNPL came on the scene a few years ago, banks and other financial services companies discovered it was hard, if not impossible, to service BNPL using legacy installment servicing infrastructure.”
“Canopy takes the pain out of servicing BNPL payments while Visa ensures those payments are disbursed instantly and effortlessly,” Bivons adds.