Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Week: Make BNPL purchases

This is the last part of a series of reports in which PYMNTS Intelligence compares data from this year’s Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Week sales events to highlight key insights and learnings for executives, retailers and consumers.

Our first report showed that while fewer consumers attended Walmart’s event than Amazon’s, Walmart customers spent more on average. In the second part, we found that customers used both summer sales events to purchase discounted and regular-priced items, with health and beauty products being particularly popular. Since both Walmart+ Week and Amazon Prime Day were members-only events, member participation was key to their success.

To conclude this series, PYMNTS Intelligence examines the role that sales events play in a consumer’s decision to purchase subscriptions and reveals what payment methods attendees use when making purchases at the sales events.

Overall, the data suggests that consumers view sales events as a benefit of membership rather than a reason to join. Special event shoppers are primarily looking for deals to stock up on products they regularly purchase, and a growing share are turning to the pay later option to complete a purchase. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) usage during events among cash-strapped shoppers living paycheck to paycheck has doubled year over year, suggesting that consumers who are more financially constrained tend to find the pay later option more appealing.

Amazon Prime and Walmart+ Week – more of a bonus than a membership driver

When asked why they participate in Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Week special events, consumers’ answer was simple: good deals on things they already buy. About 75% of shoppers at both events said deals on products they need were a key reason for participating. However, these sales events are not the main reason consumers join Amazon Prime and Walmart+.

We found that 80% of consumers subscribe to Amazon Prime primarily because of free shipping. In fact, 57% said it is the top reason for their subscription. For Walmart+, free shipping (61%) and grocery delivery (49%) are the most popular reasons for subscribing.

Meanwhile, less than a third of consumers (30%) say they joined Walmart+ because of sales events like Walmart+ Week. Likewise, about a quarter of Amazon Prime shoppers (23%) say they subscribed to the service because of Amazon Prime Day. This suggests that consumers view summer sales events as a membership benefit—but not necessarily an incentive to subscribe. In other words, Amazon Prime and Walmart+ still have room to make these events even more impactful for their subscribers, especially if they want to convert non-subscribers into members.

BNPL usage among shoppers on Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Week increases

Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Week shoppers had a wide range of payment options available during these sales events. Debit cards, a traditional option, were the most popular. Most Walmart+ Week (62%) and Amazon Prime Day (52%) shoppers made purchases using debit cards during the respective events.

Credit cards came in second. Amazon Prime Day attendees were slightly more likely to use credit cards to make purchases than Walmart+ Week shoppers (46% vs. 43%). Meanwhile, 4 in 10 Walmart+ Week shoppers used a digital wallet, with 28% using PayPal and 24% using Walmart Pay. Digital wallets are not a payment option on Amazon.

Non-traditional options gained traction, with the share of consumers using BNPL increasing year-over-year. This year, 5.2% of Amazon Prime Day shoppers used BNPL to complete a purchase, up from 3.3% last year. Among Walmart+ Week shoppers, 7.2% used BNPL to pay for their purchases, up from 5.0% last year. While there is certainly plenty of room for growth, shoppers are using the Pay Later option to take advantage of hot sales and stock up on essentials.

Twice as many paycheck-to-paycheck shoppers used BNPL during events this year

On both Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Week, BNPL usage increased among all event attendees. This was especially true for consumers who live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to pay their bills. This year, 12% of Amazon Prime Day shoppers who live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to pay their bills used BNPL to make purchases—nearly double the rate from last year. These consumers repeated this pattern at Walmart+ Week, where about 14% of consumers who live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to pay their bills used BNPL to make purchases, compared to 6.2% last year, an increase of 126%.

Sales event shoppers who don’t live paycheck to paycheck were very unlikely to use BNPL. At both events, only 2% of these consumers paid for an item using BNPL. This finding is consistent with previous years, as these sales event shoppers who can save regularly do not use BNPL. Since consumers at both events make large purchases to stock up on essentials, shoppers appear to be using their purchasing power in the ways they can: consumers who live paycheck to paycheck are more likely to rely on BNPL, while other consumers use other tools available to them.

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PYMNTS Intelligence has been tracking this battle of the titans both inside and outside the context of sales events. For more information, check out these data reports that chronicle the often neck-and-neck race for consumer retail spending. It also goes into more detail about how Amazon Prime Day sales performed compared to the Walmart+ Week event.