Australian BNPL firm Afterpay partners with US-based fintech Stripe

Australia-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) startup Afterpay announced it has partnered with California-based payments platform Stripe.

The deal will allow both new and existing Stripe merchants to offer Afterpay’s service to their customers, who can then receive their purchased items immediately and pay for them in four installments without having to take out a traditional loan or pay for interest.

Photo credit: Pymnts

Businesses on Stripe can also start accepting payments through Afterpay’s BNPL service even without an application, onboarding, or underwriting process.

Afterpay has become one of Australia’s top 20 hot stocks after the Covid-19 pandemic triggered the burgeoning popularity of the BNPL sector. The company’s sales more than tripled in the July-September quarter in 2020 compared to a year earlier.

The BNPL giant and Stripe are also teaming up with website-building platform Squarespace to provide a fully integrated checkout experience for consumers. Squarespace offers the combined integration of Stripe and Afterpay to their ecommerce customers in Australia, New Zealand, and the US.

“Afterpay has been a top requested feature from our customers,” said Paul Gubbay, chief product officer at Squarespace. “Through this partnership, we’re glad to be able to offer our merchants even more flexibility in how they transact with their customers and increase topline sales without having to sacrifice the design elements that are unique to their brand.”

See also: The dark side of ‘buy now, pay later’

Stripe merchants in Australia, New Zealand, and the US can now use Afterpay, with the service to be available to merchants in the UK and Canada soon. Meanwhile, Squarespace will also offer its combined integration of the payment platforms to Canadian customers in the near future.