The consumer credit arm of Mediobanca Group, Compass is expanding its partnership with Nexi, the European paytech, to not only service the buy now pay later (BNPL) market, but the e-commerce one as well.
PagoLight, Compass’s proprietary, full-digital BNPL solution, will be integrated into XPay, the e-commerce payment gateway developed by Nexi. Through this partnership, merchants will be able to offer their clients an innovative solution for deferring their online payments. This will replicate the same service available at physical POS via the online channels too.
“Our objective is to put merchants in a position where they are able to offer their clients the best available solutions on the market, which will allow them to leverage all business opportunities generated by digital payments”, said Andrea Gaboardi, head of e-commerce at Nexi Italia.
“We also aim to ensure that consumers have convenient and safe payment solutions, that guarantee simple and secure purchasing processes. Extending the partnership that we signed with Compass at the end of 2023 to include e-commerce will allow us to take a further step in this direction.”
Greater payment flexibility
At the checkout phase of their e-commerce purchases, customers will now have the option to pay by instalments using the BNPL formula. This means customers can have their transaction and BNPL request accepted within just a few minutes.
The partnership between the two companies will enable Nexi to make a useful service available to its clients. This will help it leverage the business opportunities offered by the BNPL solution, which are particularly significant in the e-commerce sector.
In 2023, the annual volume of transactions completed via BNPL in online commerce reached approximately €3.5billion, according to Milan Polytechnic University estimates, 81 per cent higher than the previous year.
Developing Compass
For Compass, this consolidation of the partnership represents an exceptional opportunity to significantly expand the take-up of PagoLight through digital channels. Launched in 2021, PagoLight is now operational in over 1,000 digital stores. In its physical channel it is active in over 25,000 POS. Additionally, the network is continually growing, with over 1,000 new activations per month, helped also by being integrated with Nexi SmartPOS.
“Extending our partnership with Nexi to include e-commerce is a very important step forward for us. The native integration of PagoLight into the XPay payment gateway will offer merchants an important driver to increase sales and loyalty retention amount clients,” said Luigi Pace, central manager of marketing and innovation at Compass.
“A recent survey of PagoLight users showed that 47 per cent would not have completed their purchase if this option had not been available. Meanwhile, virtually all those interviewed said that PagoLight is a ‘decisive factor’ in them returning to make other purchases via the same e-commerce website. Through this partnership with Nexi, Compass has strengthened its multichannel coverage in BNPL. Its ambition is to further consolidate its leadership in the sector.”
