Top 4 ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ Singaporean FinTechs beating COVID-19 blues

By Edil Corneille

BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) solutions are trending in Singapore with companies offering interest-free instalment payment options on purchases made online by the consumer. ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ options provide consumer buying power with the help of FinTech where individuals can meet their requirements.

Increased internet and mobile penetration have improved the accessibility of FinTech solutions by consumers and have encouraged them to conduct transactions online.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many household incomes and put a financial strain on them. Tech-savvy consumers have welcomed the disruption of financial services by ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ solutions and have managed to beat the COVID-19 blues. Below is a list consisting of the top BNPL players in Singapore.

Atome

The ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ technology company launched its service in December 2019 and now partners over 2,000 online and offline retailers across verticals including fashion, beauty, homeware and lifestyle. Atome allows customers to split their purchases into three equal payments over time with zero interest, hidden charges or annual fees. Atome has expanded to Greater China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

In December 2020, digital travel platform Agoda launched a regional partnership with the ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ platform Atome to offer flexible instalment payment options for accommodation bookings first in Singapore and Malaysia, before rolling out to include eight additional markets in Southeast Asia and APAC in 2021.

Atome is part of Advance Intelligence Group, a Series-C AI-driven technology company headquartered in Singapore, with operations across Southeast Asia, India and China. Atome’s partner retailers include Sephora, Zara, Marks & Spencer, IUIGA, and iStudio, among others.

hoolah

hoolah is an omni-channel ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ platform in Asia. Headquartered in Singapore, it is also live in Malaysia and Hong Kong, and it is said to be rapidly expanding.

The BNPL platform helps merchants in Asia to solve the critical challenges of generating new customers and getting them to return, conversion and basket size by driving consumer affordability in a responsible way. Merchants have a cost-effective and data-rich way to drive affiliate marketing, loyalty, conversion and increase their basket sizes by utilising the hoolah Buy Now Pay Later solution. hoolah focuses on the consumer and the merchant journey to bring a new type of solution and greater outcomes for customers.

Consumers can enrich their lifestyles – whatever that means to them, and worry less about the price to purchase the things they need by paying over a short duration aligned to their budgeting and salary cycles. There is no interest charged ever and no hidden costs.

OctiFi

At OctiFi, digital credit is said to be getting reinvented to make it more accessible for all consumers. The company is using modern technology to reimagine the checkout experience and make it easy for businesses of all sizes to offer responsible credit to their customers. OctiFi is inspired by a moonshot ambition to reshape financial services, starting with Southeast Asia.

OctiFi is building B2B and B2C product solutions. It makes commerce more affordable in a platform designed to serve the ones who benefit the most from responsible access to credit. Payments can be made in 3 Instalments with OctiFi.

The ‘Pay Later Service’ provided by way of an app or a web portal is a gateway to make purchases from OctiFi’s participating merchants, with an interest-free instalment plan. Users have the option to pay for a purchase with a credit or debit card.

Rely

Rely is a ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ service that enables customers to buy what they want and split the purchase amount into interest-free payments. The service entails zero interest and no extra fees for the customer and Rely partners with retailers to provide the service to millions of customers across Asia.

In December 2020, Razer FinTech and Rely jointly announced their partnership to offer BNPL services in Southeast Asia to merchants registered under Razer Merchant Services (RMS), a B2B (business-to-business) solution.

Rely uses data and technology to improve everything related to helping customers be responsible spenders. Using its proprietary decision engine, Rely harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to help make the right decision based on thousands of data points. Rely harnesses sophisticated algorithms to determine the spending capacity of customers and their ability to repay on time so that customers can spend on what they can afford to pay back.

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