On Thursday, Amazon and Square both made buy now, pay later (BNPL) options available to their Canadian customers.
Amazon partnered with American payment network Affirm, while Square launched its integration with Afterpay.
The launches mark the latest BNPL offerings to be introduced into the country, following a slew of other services that were recently made available to Canadian consumers.
Canada also has its fair share of BNPL providers, such as Toronto startup PayBright. Affirm purchased PayBright in a $340 million CAD deal that closed in January 2021. Banks are also taking notice of the trend, as RBC established a strategic partnership with Alliance Data’s Bread in 2020 to roll out its own BNPL tool, named PayPlan.
Swedish payments company Klarna, which also offers BNPL services, made its entry into the Canadian market earlier this year, establishing a product development and tech hub in Toronto.
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Amazon’s Canadian launch represents an expansion of its partnership with Affirm after the two initially partnered last year to make short-term financing available to consumers in the United States.
Last year, Affirm also partnered with Shopify to open up access to Shop Pay installments for eligible Shopify sellers in the United States. Shop Pay Installments, which is powered by Affirm’s BNPL technology, avoids sending buyers to another website to complete their purchase. Affirm claimed at the time that this feature makes it unique among BNPL solutions.
Afterpay also started offering its services in French in a move to target the Québec market in 2021.
According to the Research and Markets’ Q4 2021 BNPL survey, BNPL payment in Canada is expected to grow by 63.5 percent on an annual basis, and reach $5.95 billion USD in 2022.
This growth is supported by the current economic slowdown and surge in prices for goods, pushing consumers to rethink their budgets and tap into alternative financing options.
Featured image courtesy of Unsplash.
