Mastercard has partnered with paytech Pine Labs and Singaporean bank DBS Bank to introduce a buy now, pay later (BNPL) facility.
DBS says two million cardholders will benefit from the BNPL option
The “Mastercard Instalments with Pine Labs” programme will roll out to all DBS Bank and POSB Bank (a subsidiary of DBS) credit card holders in Singapore from March, with Indonesia and Hong Kong set to follow sometime in Q2 2022.
DBS says two million cardholders will benefit from the BNPL option, which will allow them to pay via interest-free instalments with instant approvals at participating merchants.
The solution will be available on all DBS Mastercard, Visa and American Express credit cards.
DBS’s group product head of digital consumer finance and card payments, Ananya Sen, says the bank is the first regional issuer in Asia to partner with Mastercard on this BNPL solution.
“This will scale our BNPL touch points significantly, allowing two million customers to enjoy our BNPL offering across an extensive range of physical stores, e-commerce platforms and through our apps.”
Key features of the offering include instant approval at checkout, commensurate with the cardholders credit limit, and flexible instalment periods.
Head of payments and platforms at DBS, Anthony Seow, says the bank’s BNPL-related sales in Singapore reached “record growth” in 2021.
Pine Labs’ chief business officer and head of pay later in Southeast Asia, Dheeraj Chowdhry, says the firm has been active in the BNPL space for a while and has been instrumental in growing this consumer financing trend.
Nonetheless, the partnership between Pine Labs, Mastercard and DBS will “rapidly accelerate” the growth of this option.
“The ‘Mastercard Instalments with Pine Labs’ programme allows merchants to potentially capture sales they might not have otherwise,” Chowdhry adds.
Mastercard’s senior vice president of customer solutions in Southeast Asia, Sharon Chew, says the partnership draws on expertise from three industry leaders, “and aims to create a more universal, simplified way of implementing instalment payments that benefits both consumers and businesses alike”.
