Australian BNPL giant Afterpay is stepping up its assault on in-store payments through the introduction of a contactless virtual card offering.
To make an in-store purchase, customers hit the card icon in the Afterpay app, which activates the card, which can be used to pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. As with online Afterpay purchases, customers can pay in four instalments, without any fees or interest.
Afterpay rolled out a barcode-based in-store offering back in 2016 and this now accounts for 22% of its business in Australia and New Zealand.
However, it hopes that the virtual card option will help grow this by making the process simpler for shoppers and removing integration effort and costs for merchants.
Co-CEO Nick Molnar says: "Over the past five years we have built a strong in-store offering, with tens of thousands of merchants currently offering Afterpay in-store in Australia.
"The new Afterpay virtual card, which will sit in a customer's digital wallet, is an evolution of our offering, making it even easier for millions of our Australian customers to split their in-store payments in four instalments without incurring interest - ever."