Here is a marketing idea that you may want to consider.

Afterpay day is twice a year, and interest in it has rapidly grown, as you can see below.

Today it is a massive shopping event. The last one was in March; it went well. On indications, the next one will be bigger.  After all, Afterpay has a rapidly growing user base. Currently, they have over 3 million Australians in their system who are considered good customers. So Afterpay will be actively promoting to a lot of potentially good customers. There are also 63,000 shops in the Afterpay system, including most majors, e.g. David Jones, the good guys, Kmart, etc., and most will be pushing it too.

There is no reason why you cannot join in. The next Afterpay Day sale will occur between Thursday, 18 August and Sunday, 21 August, as long as you have Afterpay, which is easy to do in our POS system and does not take long to set up. If you have not got Afterpay yet, I recommend getting it. Consider it a virtual lay-by where you don't have to wait until the customer pays in full, with fewer hassles. 

Now all you need to do to take part is make a stand of specials and stick an Afterpay day sign on top. Before you ask, no, you are not obligated to ensure they use Afterpay to buy this stock.

Want some ideas on what to put on the stand?

As a minimum, you can do this, go to the register reports > stock titled "Old Stock on hand by Date last received"

Put in a date of a year ago; now, this will give you a listing of your old stock. 

Why not use Afterpay Day to get rid of this stock now?

Start your search here if you want to make it official and do much more.

There is an old saying, "There is no going back."

Although BNPL companies' share prices and valuations are down, their products in the marketplace are still as strong as ever. Growth in BNPL, although slower, is expected to increase. Also, the market is expected to grow as many players like banks and apple are moving into this space. Whether the existing BNPL companies can exist as viable stand-alone businesses remains to be seen. Most feel these BNPLs will soon be absorbed into traditional finance companies and banks; however, the customers will not be significantly affected and will continue to buy as usual. What may change is that the primary decision to use BNPL will shift away from the store. The CBA system does not have any store input.

The belief that many retail experts had was that laybys would become more popular has not happened. Consumers are *NOT* turning back to layby, nor do I see retailers keen on going back to layby either. To a retailer, a layby sale, unlike a BNPL, is a messy problem sale. It has high administration costs, legal issues and high risks of cancellation. Besides, why should the retailer share the risk of bad debts if they can avoid them? Also, most feel that a typical BNPL customer spends more than a regular layby customer, so they want more BNPL sales rather than layby. Also, a BNPL is vested in pushing its client to buy, and they do bring customers; no one is pushing a layby customer to come.

Our advice is unchanged, offer layby for those that want it; your POS System can handle it, but make sure you can take BNPL. 

Do not create unnecessary problems for your customers to pay.

One caveat here, you need an item to cover your BNPL fees, plus BNPL often does put conditions on what you can do, e.g. some items cannot be sold under BNPL. 

Let us discuss the BNPL for SMB retailers, with Afterpay the biggest, Zip second and then a lot more. Most retailers are not keen on it but accept that the public often loves BNPL over traditional credit cards. Why not? Usually, they do not pay any surcharge as the BNPL are vocal about no-surcharges. The public also does not pay many fees as the merchant pays them. Besides, many people cannot get a credit card anyway, e.g. they are on a low income, insecure at work, and/or have a bad credit rating. 17% of BNPL customers stated they would cancel the purchase if they may not make the payment utilizing a BNPL service.

BNPL encourages people to spend more.

This results in the merchant having to pay high fees on sales except maybe in Lay-bys. Lay-bys are probably the most significant use by retailers in my market space for BNPL.

The big plus is that if you are dealing with a BNPL like Afterpay, they promote your business to millions of people. It helps you get a customer you have never had and would never have had to buy something in the shop even if you are paying high fees.

A smaller percentage of something is better than 100% of nothing.

We switched our support from Zip, as our clients seemed to do better with Afterpay.

The bigger the BNPL is, the better. Besides, from an administration view, the fewer suppliers for BNPL, the fewer headaches in the shop.

So what is happening now, I think, is a good thing. The last 12 months have seen some massive falls in share prices for BNPL. Afterpay had a 58% drop (see graph below), and the next biggest Zip was about 87% drop. The rest are following pretty much the same pattern. The problem appears to be that BNPL can't charge enough fees to cover bad debts and borrowing costs, plus the big banks are moving into this space. This is driving the share price down. If it goes down like this, we often see a period of consolidation when those with money and a desire to expand try to grab others. This is what we see happening with Humm here. The shareholders have a choice as their business has been unprofitable for the past four months. They are now looking at a share price declining more if they do not sell.

How to become an Afterpay merchant!

Afterpay is a payment type, and in its class, it is the most popular Pay Now Buy Later product in Australia. Currently, about 3.6 million users in Australia; check for more details here. It is great for my clients that rather than use laybys, it is better to use Afterpay as you get your money now, with no hassles. If you are doing laybys, I recommend you try to switch to Afterpay. It's the one that my clients report the greatest success in using.

Because of its interest, I get repeatably asked about integrating it into our POS Software.

It does not need integration as your EFTPOS machine can do it. However you will then need to get Afterpay permission to become an Afterpay approved merchant. If you are interested, you need to go here and provide details like your EFTPOS terminal details. Once accepted, which does not take long, you get the ability to accept Afterpay. Your funds are settled like any other card payment.

Point to consider:

) Lots of people use it

) Afterpay does direct customers to your shop

) You will need to accept Paywave Mastercard with its costs.

) It is very hard to pass on Afterpay fees to your clients.

) If you do not use it, there is no cost, so you can keep it for emergency although the Paywave is a problem. As it needs to be activated.

We do have a product baring system that you will need to help handle the following:

) Fees are fairly high so there are a few low-cost items that you will not want to go through.

) Some products Afterpay will not let you trade through them.

Clients of ours doing this have reported that it is straightforward to use and does fulfil a need for their consumers.

There have been some changes in our Afterpay integration. We followed up on it, but there are no plans to fix it, so you will need to switch to this method.  Clients of ours doing this have reported that it is easy to use and fulfils a need for many consumers.

Do you need a BNPL Solution now?

Yes as the era where customers paid in cash or with a credit card is over.

* Currently, 20% of Australian shoppers have a BNPL account. 

* Signs are that BNPL is expected to continue to grow.

* BNPL is a proven lead generation tool,

* Offering BNPL is much better than doing layby. The sale is settled immediately, with much fewer hassles.

* It does help customers make large-ticket purchases as it splits the value of the buy into convenient instalments.

You to ensure that you do lose out on customers because you do not have the means to accept their payment for a sale.

But the fees are a problem of about 6%, so if you need a BNPL solution, you need to review your usage policy. 

What next for BNPL?

We can expect BNPL to increase.

* As BNPL is still experiencing high growth.

* With these times, many people are looking for new lines of credit.

* More companies are moving into this space, including big banks and many traditional money traders, e.g. Paypal. The great plus here is that these new solutions have none or much lower fees. The big banks do not even give the merchants a choice. It is on the EFTPOS machine for the customer to select this option. Plus the banks are determined to get into this space, and they will, if necessary, run it at a loss to keep market share. 

Conversely, if the Reserve Bank gets its way, they will change the rules to allow merchants to pass on the fees that BNPL providers charge retailers to consumers. What will the customers do if they get levied a 7% fee by the merchant?  I expect that many customers will drop BNPL if these fees are levied. 

The more ways customers can make purchases through your company, the greater your earning potential.