Zip Pay – Buy Now, Pay Later

The future of payment gateways will be reverse lay-buy. Most people should remember the feeling of wanting to buy something but not having the cash right at that moment – so one of the alternatives was to lay-buy it. But traditionally, you had to wait until you paid off the item in full before you got it. Not anymore.

Zip Pay allows customers to purchase goods up to $1,000 in value and then pay the amount back over time. There are no credit cards, loans or interest – ever. It works as a digital shopping account – they sign up using your social media account, go through a simple credit check and then start shopping.

The payments can be split into weekly or monthly repayments over a variety of different lengths of time, meaning consumers are in control of how they pay back the amount. If the amount is paid back in full there is nothing additional to pay – however they can choose to spread the payments over a few months and pay just $5 per month as an account fee.

As a retailer you will only ever pay when a sale is made, just a small % per transaction – no setup fees, monthly charges or commitments. The merchant service fee varies depending on trading volume.

Zip Pay integrates with the leading e-commerce platforms; WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Neto  & Shopp – plus they can work with custom platforms

As of November 2016 there are over 1,000 retailers signed up, across a range of categories – Education, Fashion, Food & Beverage, Gifts & Gadgets, Home & Garden, Kids and Sport & Outdoors, so there is bound to be a category for you to fit into.

There are a few similar companies out there, which will only end up benefiting consumers as well as retailers – the more options people have to pay, whether that’s debit, PayPal, credit or ‘reverse lay-buy’, the better.