Zip considers partnership with Apple amid increasing BNPL usage

Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) company Zip is reportedly considering a partnership with Apple.

This collaboration would integrate Zip’s installment plan offering with Apple in the US, CEO Cynthia Scott told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The company also plans to announce agreements with major US retailers this quarter, she added.

“We don’t currently have an integration with Apple in the U.S., but we are in discussions with them about that,” Scott said Tuesday.

Zip also recently announced that merchants using Stripe in the U.S. will be able to offer Zip to their customers. Scott said the company is now looking to partner with other payment providers.

As the WSJ report noted, Apple introduced a BNPL offering called Apple Pay Later in March last year, but stopped issuing new loans earlier this year and announced plans to offer installment payment options for Apple Pay through other providers.

Scott told the newspaper that her company hopes to integrate its product into the checkout lines of other major retailers. The company is already working with Best Buy, she said, adding that the company will announce “major U.S. retailers” in the September quarter.

Zip’s efforts come at a time when BNPL services are rapidly increasing in popularity, largely due to younger, digitally connected consumers driving this trend.

“This trend is particularly evident during peak shopping season, with consumer spending on BNPL transactions reaching $17 billion between November and December, up 14% year over year,” PYMNTS recently wrote, noting that experts say this shift is due to economic uncertainty.

“This increase indicates a clear shift in consumer preference towards flexible payment options that allow costs to be deferred without significant interest,” the report continues.

In other BNPL news, PYMNTS spoke with Alan Koenigsberg, senior vice president and global head of large and mid-sized commercial solutions, working capital and embedded finance at Visa, last week about the possibility of installment payments for small businesses.

“BNPL is ultimately about advocacy – about the small business taking the bull by the horns and saying, ‘I can actually get additional working capital by splitting these transactions’ – and that’s powerful,” he told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“It is not a loan per se, it is about companies making their purchases and paying the way they want to pay,” he added.