Afterpay shopping event to include physical retail for the first time

Dive Brief:

As retailers go omnichannel, so do sales events. Afterpay, the installment payment startup, will include its services in physical stores for the first time as part of its fifth bi-annual Afterpay Day event taking place March 25 – 28, according to a Wednesday press release.
Multiple brands and retailers, including Aveda, Vera Bradley and Mac Cosmetics, will offer in-store and online sales in collaboration with AfterPay. Using its Afterpay Shop Directory, customers can also find deals from brands like Puma, J. Crew and Anthropologie, the company said.
Afterpay's app will point users toward participating stores near them. Sellers that joined in the last Afterpay Day event saw an average sales growth of 36%, and their average number of customers increased by 46%, per the press release.

Dive Insight:

Afterpay's brick-and-mortar push follows the payment platform's expansion into retail stores in October. The company said it first introduced the in-store feature in Australia and New Zealand five years ago before piloting it in select U.S. stores. With the app, customers can pay in installments through their mobile wallets.

The startup noted that its platform drove 45 million shoppers to retailers via the Afterpay Shop Directory in December alone. The company said it also added a "favorites" feature this year, allowing shoppers to save their desired items for later.

"We have extended our sale to physical retail, doubled the number of sale days and, most importantly, we have more than doubled the amount of merchants who are offering incredible deals and promotions to their shoppers," Melissa Davis, Head of North America at Afterpay said, in a statement. "We are proud to deliver this incredibly popular event just as retailers welcome their customers back to their stores for Spring shopping."

Meanwhile, Klarna, another buy now, pay later platform, also integrated its services into Google Pay for in-store payments last August. A couple of months later, the company announced that it expanded its in-store payments option to more than 60,000 stores across the country, including H&M, The North Face and Timberland.

As more retailers team up with installment payment platforms, consumers are projected to spend even more online in the future and have increasingly relied on buy now, pay later services, according to an Adobe report released this month. Findings show that installment payment platforms have seen a 215% spike in consumer use compared to last year. Adobe also predicts that e-commerce spending in 2022 will break $1 trillion.