Visa is jumping into the BNPL market, rolling out APIs that let its clients offer instalment payment products.
BNPL has emerged as one of the hottest fintech areas over the last year, with the likes of Affirm and Klarna being joined by banks, PayPal and, reportedly, Apple.
Visa has set up a website providing its credit card issuing partners with APIs to develop and pilot their own instalment payment programmes. Users can choose the duration of loans, the participating merchants and cards, and the interest and fees.
APIs are then available to check eligible plans for a transaction, select a plan, convert the original transaction into an instalment plan and then to schedule the payments.
Visa argues that the BNPL model benefits, the consumer, merchant, financial institution and acquirer. While BNPL is usually used to buy media and big ticket items, Visa says that in some markets it could work for everyday purchases.
In Canada, Visa has already signed CIBC, Desjardins and Scotiabank to the BNPL offering, while the first partner in the US is Commerce Bank.