The lack of regulation with Buy Now, Pay Later payment options has exposed vulnerable consumers to over-indebtedness as a result of abusive fees and charges by financial services providers.
BNPL products are commonly falsely marketed as the ‘cost-free’ alternative to consumer credit. This is misleading, to say the least: late payment fees make up between 8% and 35% of BNPL companies' revenues.
Clearly, this does not leave happy or repeat customers and causes grave problems for unsuspecting customers. Consumers and retailers alike are having to deal with the onslaught.
Tinka's goal is to become the most recommended and responsible deferred payments partner in the Netherlands and across other European countries.
We are born out of retail. From 1960 onwards, we helped to create one of the largest retailers in the Netherlands with more than 70% of revenues generated via our responsible products. In 2019, we started our journey to independence and offered our experience to other retailers, which ultimately led Tinka to spin out of its retail parent in 2021. As a result of our innovative solutions, Tinka is now offering its omnichannel products to retailers across the Netherlands generating over EUR 1.5 billion annually and serving millions of customers. Responsibly, with peace of mind to our retail partners and our valued consumers.
When consumers are having trouble paying, everyone is losing out: merchants, consumers and ultimately, the deferred payments market. Merchants, as they lose repeated customers. Consumers, as they suddenly find themselves being treated as mere numbers. The market, as they have let both merchants and consumers down. In contrast, we give consumers and merchants peace of mind when dealing with deferred payments. We provide the right solutions to the customers of our partners. Everybody wins.
We aim to establish our reputation as the trusted partner of choice for merchants and consumers and thus, raising standards across the industry. No one will be left behind.
Changing a billion EUR market means we must always be at least one step ahead to lead the way: we have made every effort to support existing debtors through the COVID-19 crisis by extending a helping hand to those who needed it. When we saw inflation rising towards the end of last year, we were standing by the side of our consumers as the first in the market. With great results - consumers appreciate us with an NPS of 52, steadily increasing.
As Tinka, all of us are extremely strong proponents of implementing the new Consumer Credit Directive (CCD) as initially drafted without being watered down by the extreme lobbying of the market. We see this as the one chance of the next decade to avert human misery that is bound to be unleashed should regulations not catch up with and counteract market practices. We observe too many loopholes in the BNPL market mercilessly exploited to the detriment of millions of consumers and thousands of merchants.
No matter what the result of the new regulations might be in the end, we will not stand for practices that go against the interests of our partners, retailers and consumers.
We kept innovating with passion and are proud to be the only player to cover the whole deferred payments landscape - from invoice to BNPL to consumer credit. Fully regulated. Omnichannel.
For our retail partners with a brick and mortar presence, we innovated our deferred payments solution ‘Tinka Tab’, which is fully independent of the Visa and Mastercard payment rails to reduce integration pain. Omnichannel.
For our consumers we innovated a simple and straightforward experience: within 90 seconds any consumer can undergo KYC, fully CCD compliant creditworthiness checks and even card (Tinka Tab) issuance. Within 90 seconds Tinka enables consumers to be in full control of their cash flow. With full peace of mind.
Everybody wins.
This article was first published in Payment Methods Report 2022, the most updated overview of trends and developments in the payment methods space and the innovative technologies that these methods work upon, emerging consumers habits, and strategies on how to win at conversion and retention.
Throughout his career, Charly has founded, built, worked for, failed at or sold several businesses around the world. But above all, he is a strategist, people leader, geek, proper technology & data nerd, and networker at heart. Not necessarily in this order. He joined the Netherland's largest department store, an Apax Partners private equity portfolio company, as Group CTO in April 2016. Four years later Charly took on the position of CEO of Tinka, the consumer finance business within the group and carved it out successfully with the Tinka team.
Tinka is a deferred payments service provider based in the Netherlands, registered and authorised by the Netherlands Authority for Financial Markets (AFM). With more than half a century of experience in the deferred payments sector, we offer all deferred payment solutions to our merchant partners and their customers. Responsibly. These solutions include invoiced Buy Now, Pay Later, and different consumer credit options.
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