The consumer credit arm of Italian investment bank Mediobanca Group has made two fintech investments designed to boost its BNPL operations.
Mediobanca's Compass unit has acquired Italian fintech Soisy and bought a 19.5% stake in Swiss outfit HeidiPay.
Founded in 2017, Soisy specialises in the granting of special purpose loans for the purchase of goods and services using e-commerce platforms. It works with 800 merchants, facilitating EUR50 million in loans a year.
HeidiPay builds digital platforms to support e-commerce BNPL, developing agreements with distributors and luxury brands.
The pair will supercharge Compass's BNPL offering, PagoLight, which launched last year for in-store purchases and is also now working with e-commerce platforms.
Gian Luca Sichel, CEO, Compass, says: "Compass is so far the only bank in Italy to seize the opportunities offered by this business and create its own interest-free deferred payment solution with PagoLight: it’s a business which dovetails perfectly with consumer credit, innovative and with excellent potential to support growth.
"BNPL also allows a bank such as Compass to strengthen our presence in e-commerce, with a focus on certain categories of products and targets in particular, such as younger and digitally-literate clients, which historically have received less coverage from consumer credit."