Square taps Clearpay to offer its sellers BNPL functionality

The integration will enable Square sellers in the UK to offer a BNPL solution that allows customers to pay in four interest-free instalments over a six-week period while merchants get paid right away. 

For online purchasing, Clearpay will now be embedded as a payment option within Square Online’s checkout system, giving sellers the opportunity to improve their average purchase size, increase basket conversion and attract more customers.

Sellers will be able to accept Clearpay in-person at the buyer checkout stage through any Square point of sale software, Square Point of Sale, Square Appointments, Square for Retail, and Square for Restaurants. Sellers who accept payments via Square’s Virtual Terminal dashboard can offer Clearpay via text message Pay Links or by using Square Terminal hardware.

Developers can consolidate transaction data and build and maintain a single integration for Square and Clearpay payments with a few lines of code within the Square Web Payments SDK.

This marks another step in the global integration of Clearpay (known as Afterpay outside the UK and Europe) following the acquisition of Afterpay by Block, as the UK will be the first market to launch BNPL available across all platforms at the same time, including in-store, online, and can also be integrated by Square’s developers and partners.

The effects of BNPL in the UK, US, and Australia

The BNPL model is one of the UK’s fastest-growing online payment method accounting for nearly GBP 13 billion of UK ecommerce spending in 2021, as per the press release. It is projected to double in value by 2025 to account for 12.1% (nearly GBP 32 billion) of UK ecommerce spending. Globally, BNPL is predicted to generate USD 680 billion in transaction volume worldwide in 2025.

Since integration has taken place across the US and Australia, a combined Square and Clearpay has already proven to attract new shoppers and drive incremental revenue for sellers of all sizes. Sellers using Square Online are seeing the following impact on their businesses:

• Across both the US and Australia, the average transaction size with Afterpay is 3x greater than non-BNPL purchases;

• Globally, Square observed a 180% increase in new consumers leveraging Afterpay through Square sellers between February and March 2022;

• In the US, retail businesses that offered Afterpay as a payments option on their website are seeing a lift in overall online sales, with men’s and women’s clothing stores growing 17%, specialised apparel and accessories, 15%, pet stores, 13%, sporting goods stores, 12%, and jewellery and watch shops, 10%.