Startups look to cash in on ‘buy now & pay later’

BENGALURU: As mobile wallets grapple with regulatory constraints, startups working around the buy-now-pay-later model sense fresh opportunity by leveraging the ease of transaction they offer.
Industry insiders said mobile wallets, which were originally positioned as a single-click checkout process for online commerce, can slowly give way to a tab system where consumers can make purchases in one go and pay in bulk later. They might not be as mass market as wallets, but from a checkout convenience factor, they could be better than wallets.
Success rate for transactions on this mode are as high as 99%, which is one of the major selling points for ecommerce companies, according to the insiders. Nityanand Sharma, who cofounded Simpl, said that his product leverages the age-old ‘khata’ system, where the local grocer or the merchant maintained a notebook and the consumer would pay in bulk at the end of the month.