Sezzle launches its Pay-in-2 product

The Pay-in-2 offering will provide additional freedom to consumers while also giving a responsible approach to pay over time. Customers will be able to pay 50% of the purchase price at the moment of purchase and the rest 50% two weeks later.

The Pay-in-2 product will enable Sezzle's offers to grow into new categories such as supermarket, monthly subscriptions, and other higher frequency categories where dividing into two payments is more practical than splitting into four payments over six weeks. Sezzle's ability to provide different payment options leads to greater approval rates and increased shopper conversions.

Sezzle now offers a full array of payment alternatives, with Pay-in-2 providing a choice for consumers at every price range. Sezzle also allows customers to Pay-in-4 over six weeks or in monthly payments of up to 48 months, in addition to Pay-in-2. Sezzle is one of the few BNPL suppliers in North America that offers all of these payment alternatives.

Opportunity to build a credit score

Sezzle's new Pay-in-2 offering, like Sezzle's Pay-in-4 solution, will allow users to increase their credit scores if they opt into Sezzle Up, Sezzle's credit-builder function. Sezzle submits consumers' payment history to the three main credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) if they have opted-in to the Sezzle Up credit reporting program, with the purpose of financially empowering the next generation and giving a responsible method to pay. As a result, if individuals fail to make their payments on time, their credit scores will suffer.

Sezzle does a soft credit check to determine a user's credit history. Soft credit checks offer enough information to provide BNPL services with a sense of creditworthiness without negatively impacting a person's credit score with a hard inquiry.

Merchants that provide Sezzle will be able to enable the new Pay-in-2 option using their current Sezzle connection. Merchants must take no further steps to begin offering Pay-in-2 to their consumers.

The development of the BNPL space

The attention paid to BNPL as the new 'credit card' is not unwarranted, since some BNPL services may be quite enticing, and research suggests that many customers use BNPL on a regular basis, rather than as a one-time payment mechanism.

Furthermore, with the development of vertical-specific BNPL offerings, the acquisition of smaller BNPL players by those with greater market share, and the increasing popularity of white-labelled BNPL solutions by some retailers, parts of the global BNPL landscape have begun to show signs of maturation.

While it's not all bad, and big names are expanding, some are clearly stepping back. Sezzle, an American BNPL provider, informed Indian merchants of its plan to quit the Indian market in April 2022 and requested that the service be deactivated from their individual websites. A few months later, what appeared to be one of the most important BNPL alliances fell through, with Zip and Sezzle cancelling their previously announced merger arrangement.