Last July, PayPal rebranded its Bill Me Later service as “PayPal Credit,” as a part of the company’s efforts to bring its credit products “more to the center of PayPal.” Today, as promised earlier, PayPal Credit is expanding its support for monthly payments with an option for retailers that allows them to decide on the number of months and interest rates that work best for their customers. Retailers will also be able to choose to interest-free credit options for the first time, for their customers shopping online.
The announcement is being made at the National Retail Federation conference on Monday, where PayPal also announced a newly added Business Consulting service.
With the upgraded PayPal Credit feature, customers will be able to divide larger purchases into smaller ones – allowing online shoppers to pay via PayPal when they may have otherwise turned to their credit cards.
The PayPal Credit offering that had been previously offered was if a customer spent $99, they would have had no interest and no payments for six months. PayPal says it will still make that available to retailers, but this change allows for them to offer more flexible credit to their customers.
The company said in July that it sees consumer spending go up 30% after a customer adopts a PayPal credit vehicle, citing studies that have tracked usage of the older Bill Me Later service as well as the GE-issued PayPal credit card.
PayPal also said it was buying back the GE portfolio in 2016 as part of its strategy to increase and expand its credit offerings – something the company notes is key as it expands into the offline world, and omni-channel. The company later plans to expand PayPal Credit more directly to retail and point-of-sale, but that’s for a future date.
For now, it’s about bringing more online consumers to PayPal Credit. With the new offering, merchants are paid immediately and PayPal settles with the customer.
Additionally, PayPal announced a new set of Business Consulting services that will allow businesses to learn more about best practices like reducing cart abandonment, improving conversion, or making international sales, for example. The consulting team had earlier been available only to select (read: larger) PayPal merchants, where it says to have increased incremental revenues by the millions. Now it’s opening to all, no matter the merchant’s size.
The program had been in pilot testing for several months, and to date, PayPal has worked with hundreds of merchants.
Some of the new PayPal consulting services will be offered for free, while PayPal will charge for others, like custom development, depending on the merchant’s needs. The company has yet to announce pricing, but notes in most cases there’s no charge.