The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Dec 17th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

One of the most noteworthy partnerships of this week was Barclays and Amazon, signing a deal to offer their customers the possibility to pay in instalments – the BNPL fever has infected legacy banks too. UK consumers will now be able to apply for a reusable credit account from Barclays to be used when shopping on amazon.co.uk to spread the cost of their purchases in equal monthly instalments.

A safety layer of credit check is applied in this operation, as shoppers will have to receive a confirmation of approval from Barclays, and only the eligible ones will be able to proceed to the checkout with an instalment plan. The bank will also set consumers’ spending limits, allowing them to make repeat purchases without needing to reapply, as long as they remain within their overall credit limit and monthly payment limit.

“This is another major step in our ambition to reinvent payments at the point-of-sale and delight customers. Amazon offers a world-class shopping experience, and this new service gives users a fully reusable payment-by-instalments option, which they can use to spread the cost of purchases over a longer period,” said
Ruchir Rodrigues, head of Barclays cubed & consumer bank Europe.

The move comes after a similar partnership has been announced in Germany last year, proving that the bank is now seriously taking steps towards the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ booming sphere.

Deals of the week

• NatWest and SurePay partner to launch Confirmation of Payee for HMRC
• MODIFI announces $145 million to power international SME trade
• Flexiti announces new $527 million term securitization facility
• Klub announces the first close of its INR 2 billion financing fund
• BharatX raises Pre-Seed round of $250,000
• Klarna partners with GoCardless to accelerate expansion in the US
• Opera partners with Butter for an in-browser BNPL extension in the UK

Be on the lookout for

You might remember that a few weeks ago we announced Square‘s rebranding in Block to reflect the company’s ambitions in the crypto space. Well, now Block/ former Square has been suited by taxation preparation firm H&R Block, accusing the payments firm of confusing customers. The rebranded business will now compete more directly with H&R Block as it prospects to operate deeper in financial services. But the latter, after 65 years in business, is not down to get its name blown.