The five biggest fintech trends of 2021

4. BNPL eats payments

The deals for consumer-facing BNPLs Paidy and Afterpay highlight just how important buy-now pay-later models have become to payments – and show a big demand for merchants to find ways to engage consumers in a manner that credit cards don’t offer.

The industry now supports multiple business models: white-label BNPL (Pine Labs in India, Limepay in Australia, Amazon); vertical BNPL specialists (especially in Australia, which has birthed Brighte, Deferit, Flexibond and Plenti); credit-card installment BNPL (Commonwealth Bank); challenger bank-offered BNPL (Douugh); and super-apps (AliPay, WeChat Pay).

Asia now boasts many fintech startups focused on BNPL: Atome, Hoolah, Kredivo, MobiKwik, ZestMoney, Cashalo – the list goes on. Anyone in the payments world is working on a BNPL strategy if they don’t already have one.