Electronics and video game retailer, EB Games will now offer buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) to its customers via its latest partnership with BNPL fintech and enterprise payments provider, Limepay.
EB Games has over 300 stores across the country and sought out Limepay as part of a broader strategy to accelerate online sales growth, buoyed by a 64% sales increase during March and 185% year-to-date increase.
EB Games will launch its own native BNPL in time for the critical Christmas shopping season, via Limepay, to millions of loyal gaming fans, EB Games senior director, Shane Stockwell said.
“EB is always looking to innovate. With the demand for BNPL increasing, we want to offer our customers a way to engage directly with us when they transact. Limepay’s white-label offering is unique and keeps customers on our site.”
Many retailers are joining forces with Limepay to keep customers on their own sites at the point of payment and create a seamless experience, as a solution to the margin squeezing and heavy leakage of customer data common in many BNPL solutions, according to Limepay c0-founder and CEO, Tim Dwyer (pictured with c0-founder and chief revenue officer, Dan Peters).
“When the BNPL model was originally introduced, it seemed like such an innovative and commercially advantageous way for retailers to encourage greater customer spending,” Dwyer said.
“As a result, it was welcomed with open arms by retailers who couldn’t add Afterpay and Zip logos to their online checkout fast enough, and even plastered them across the front of their bricks-and-mortar shop fronts as a selling point, such as ‘We accept Afterpay! You can pay using Zip!’. And thus began the encroaching power imbalance between retailers and these third-party brands.
“What is less emphasised in all the hype of the BNPL success story is the way BNPLs have made such a significant land-grab in such a short amount of time by playing retailers off against one another, and using one retailers’ customer data to promote to its competitors, to win or keep them as clients.
“BNPLs may initially bring new consumers to their merchant customers, but soon after move these consumers on to the next new merchant in a manner that sees customer lifetime value build for the marketplace, but not for the merchants. It’s a vicious, unsustainable, and costly cycle, and it’s the retailers that will lose in the long run.”