Buy now pay later (BNPL) offerings have surged in popularity within the last few years. If Karnataka-based management consulting firm Redseer is to be believed, though, the market has only just gotten its feet wet compared to the tidal wave just offshore. Specifically, the firm anticipates an increase from about $3 billion in the current Indian BNPL market to a staggering $45-50 billion within the next four years alone, with BNPL users increasing commensurately from 10 million to up to 100 million.
Citing an existing lack of reliable credit options in traditional financial institutions, Co-Founder of Indian BNPL firm MobiKwik Upasana Taku estimates that “BNPL will become the fastest revenue driver for the business because there has been a 45X growth in the BNPL transactions in the last two years. New user addition is very high; repeat rate and average ticket size is going up."
In addition to the increased convenience of BNPL payment schemes compared to heavily bureaucratic traditional loan procedures, the surge in BNPL has been attributed to persisting lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In what the Chief Executive Officer of BNPL firm CASHe Yogi Sadana refers to as “revenge demand,” customers are eager to make purchases online to make up for times when they have not been permitted to leave the house.
