Buy Now, Pay Later

Offer flexibility for your customers while increasing security and conversions.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) tools are the newest payment feature available through SamPay

Payment processors Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay allow you to offer your customers a BNPL payment method, which means they will be able to purchase your products in interest-free installments while you still receive the full payment upfront. This flexibility for your customers results in higher sales conversions for you, plus increased security: you receive the full payment upfront from Klarna, Affirm, or Afterpay, which means there’s no risk for you of the customer stopping payments partway through their payment plan. 

How might this change your product strategy on SamCart?

Up until now, if you wanted to offer payment flexibility for a high ticket item with a One Time Payment pricing type, you would need to duplicate that product and make the duplicate a Limited Subscription pricing type, then add this duplicate product as Payment Option that customers could choose between. This allows customers to pay over time if they can’t pay everything upfront. Unfortunately, this strategy doesn’t cover the same level of risk of customers ceasing payments on the Limited Subscription, and is more work for you to create and maintain multiple product versions.

The new recommended strategy from the SamPay team to help increase money in your pocket, reduce time spent on admin tasks, and reduce risk is to convert current Limited Subscription products to One Time Payment products so that Klarna/Affirm/Afterpay will appear at checkout. These tools will not appear at checkout for any subscription products since BNPL tools are essentially a subscription on their own.

This way, you will receive the full payment upfront rather than spread out over time; the customer enters an agreement to pay Klarna/Affirm/Afterpay over time, and the processor pays you everything upfront.

Enabling BNPL tools

Affirm and Afterpay will automatically be enabled for all SamPay users. 

To add Klarna, log into your Stripe account > go to the settings icon in the top right of your Stripe dashboard > click on the Payment Methods link under the Payments tab > scroll down to Klarna > click Turn On.

Requirements for using BNPL tools

Requirements for eligibility include your country, product type, and business category/MCC.

Affirm Country Support: United States and Canada

Klarna Country Support: United States, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

Afterpay Country Support: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain

Each of these BNPL vendors has some restrictions based on MCCs/Business Categories. If you are an unsupported business, you should have received an email from our SamPay partner, Stripe, alerting you of your eligibility. If you did not receive an email but are not seeing BNPL tools on your checkout page, you can email support@samcart.com and our team can verify your eligibility. 

Checkout layouts: Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay are supported on all checkout layouts except for legacy templates. 

Product types: All BNPL tools work with Order Bumps and will appear at checkout for a product that has an Upsell associated with it. 

Important Note: Upsell pages will not display if the customer checked out using BNPL tools. 

BNPL tools will not work with any subscription product. This includes free trials.

Order minimums and maximums: 

Klarna: $10-$10,000+ (varies by customer)

Affirm: $50-$30,000

Afterpay: $1-$4,000 

If a base product is under a processor's minimum, but an order bump is added at checkout that pushes the total order value above the minimum, then the processor will appear as a payment method option. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I turn off BNPL tools?

A: At the product level, switch off the Alternative Payments toggle. This toggle controls whether a specific product allows for checkout using BNPL as well as other alternative payment methods we release in the future, e.g. One-Click Checkout.

You can also turn off any payment methods within your Stripe dashboard. Log into your Stripe account > Go to the settings icon in the top right of your Stripe dashboard > Under the Payments tab click on Payment methods link > Scroll down to the payment method you are looking for > Click turn off.

Q: Does BNPL affect upsells?

A: Yes, if BNPL is used to purchase a product, associated upsells will NOT appear.

Q: Why aren't BNPL processors showing up even though I've switched on the Alternative Payments toggle for a product?

A: If a processor is turned off within your Stripe account, it will need to be turned back on within your Stripe account; it is not enough to turn it on within your SamCart dashboard only. Follow the steps above to manage which processors you have enabled in Stripe.  

Q: When do I get my money as the seller?

A: You get the full price of your product upfront! The BNPL vendor provides you the full price of the product while the customer has an agreement to pay the vendor back over time.

Q: Does SamCart charge a markup for BNPL tools?

A: No, the fees associated with our BNPL tools are not marked up by SamCart, are in alignment with the market rate, and are covered by you as the seller, just like with Stripe. When payment is made in 4 installments:

Klarna fees: 5.99% + 30c    

Affirm fees: 6% + 30c

Afterpay fees: 6% + 30c

Q: How do refunds work with BNPL?

A: When a refund is initiated, the BNPL processor will pause any future payments from the customer and refund them for any installments already paid. You, the seller, owe the refund to the processor, not the buyer. The amount owed is withheld by the processor from future payouts to you. 

Q: Where can I see data on how frequently BNPL tools are being used to purchase my products?

A: Under your Activity > Orders screen you will find a new column in the table called Payment Methods that will list the name of the payment method used on the product (either “Klarna”, “Affirm”, or “Afterpay”).

Under Report > Sales by Product you will find a new column in the table called Alternate Payment Orders that shows you the total count of alternate payment methods used for that product. You can also hover over the number to see a full breakdown between Klarna and Affirm. As we add more payment methods to our SamPay offerings, those will eventually be shown in the payment method breakdown, too.

Q: I am based in a supported country but BNPL still isn’t showing up.

A: If your business type is eligible and BNPL still isn’t showing up, it might be because the BNPL tool doesn’t support cross-border payments. If your business is based in one country but presents products in another currency, then that is considered a cross-border payment and not all BNPL tools support that functionality at this time.

Q: Do BNPL tools perform credit checks?

A: It depends. BNPL vendors perform either no credit check, a soft credit check, or a hard credit check depending on the riskiness of the transaction. For example, Affirm offers a 0 percent APR option with four biweekly payments and no credit check, but its longer-term installment loans rely on a hard inquiry. A soft credit check does not ding your credit score.

Q: Do I have to pay the Stripe processing fee PLUS the Buy Now, Pay Later processing fee?

A: No, the only fee to use the BNPL tools are mentioned in the above answer.

Q: Is BNPL supported on the legacy page builder?

A: Legacy templates do not support BNPL options


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