Buy or Build a Buy Now Pay Later platform?

Are you debating whether to buy or build your own Buy Now Pay Later platform? In this article, we discuss the advantages and side effects for you to take into consideration when expanding your business.

We discuss topics such as:

• Pros vs cons of building your own BNPL platform
• Pros vs cons of buying a SaaS BNPL platform
• A BNPL platform that lasts
• Why partner with a SaaS company to build your BNPL platform?

 

What is a SaaS Buy Now Pay Later platform?

A cloud-based SaaS platform is the underlying engine for a BNPL business. We view the platform much like a container that holds functions and facts that builds a lender’s BNPL offering.

Furthermore, a SaaS BNPL platform consists of modules, modules that the lender can add to its Buy Now Pay Later offering as the business and customer demands change and grow.

Think of it as building a house. It is made of outer walls, a floor, and a roof. Then we add modules, such as inner walls, electricity, running water, kitchen appliances and lighting. As the family moves in, gets comfortable and grows, the house needs to be maintained and further developed to fit new demands. New modules are launched and original ones updated.

A module in the means of BNPL can be a geographic market or a credit product. These modules come with many advanced settings. Settings to suit different consumer behavior, market regulations, laws and payment preferences. Combining different modules and settings makes a Buy Now Pay Later platform sophisticated, and technically complicated.

Buy or build your Buy Now Pay Later platform?

Consumers demand BNPL and instantly turn to other players if something as easy as a payment is made complicated. When a lender has identified the need for a BNPL platform, going to market fast is key, or it will lose customers. Lost customers mean lost income, so the lender has to make a decision. How to proceed? Buy or build?

So what do you get when buying a BNPL platform? And what would you need to build in order to be relevant to your customers in the long run?

 

A BNPL platform that lasts

The consumer preference to buy now and pay later is here to stay. It is growing rapidly in all demographic groups and there is no reason to believe it’s just some short-lived coincidence. Thus we are certain that development needs to aim for flexibility, scalability, and security.

Behind an advanced service presented in a user experience lies complicated technology. Buy Now Pay Later is no exception. Building a BNPL platform that lasts consists of taking many aspects into consideration.

• Flexibility – rapid changes in the market or consumer needs over time
• Scalability – scale in products, transactions and markets/geography
• Security – a solid foundation that never leaks sensitive information
• Long time-commitment – continuous development, maintenance and surveillance of the platform
• Handling – such as discounts, disputes, audits and unhappy flows when things don’t work out the way they were planned

 

Pros and Cons

To stay relevant to customers and consumers a BNPL platform needs constant development. If you choose to build, build for flexibility. Build modular. Build Buy Now Pay Later for evolving needs.

Find out whether your company is suitable to build your own solution vs buying into a platform by considering the pros and cons of the alternatives.

 

Pros of building your own platform:

• You get exactly what you want
• You have full control over the product lifecycle, prioritization and similar

Cons of building a BNPL platform:

• Time spent on development
• Time spent on upkeep and maintenance
• Time spent away from your core business development
• Lost revenue as you take time building instead of going to market fast with a partner
• Teams – salary, administration and leadership, including ensuring updated skillsets

Pros of buying a SaaS platform:

• Access to expert product and tech team
• Possibility to go to market fast
• Maintain full focus on your core business development
• A flexibility to scale to new payment products and markets over time by adding more modules to your offering
• Opportunity to save heavily on tech investments

Cons of buying a SaaS platform:

• Time spent on development
• Time spent on upkeep and maintenance

Partnering with a SaaS company

As you can see there are large costs involved in building your own BNPL platform. These costs tend to outweigh the costs of partnering with a BNPL SaaS company by far. Partnering with a company that spends all of their days engineering these solutions will take you to market fast. And going to market fast means lower costs and higher income.

Let Sileon do the work for you.

 

Sileon offers a BNPL platform
in your own brand

By in your own brand, we mean it is all yours. Nobody but you will ever see your data. Sileon develops the building blocks for your BNPL platform, and you fill it with your brand, your customer experience, your credit products and the settings that apply.

We are right beside you, developing all the connections and combinations necessary for your BNPL platform to become a flexible, secure and user-friendly platform that lasts.

 

So, what is it that a lender buys into with Sileon?

• Meeting consumer demands as purchasing behavior changes. It’s key for brand loyalty, retention and flow of income
• Maintained or increased profits
• BNPL capabilities to quickly broaden credit offerings that empower the business
• The flexibility to evolve and continue to be relevant
• Being customer-oriented over time
• A BNPL platform that lasts. In the lender’s own brand
• Owning all data and controlling the customer relationship

 

Would you like more information on what Sileon’s Buy Now Pay Later platform can do for your business? We’d love to show you!

 

Fill out our contact form and we’ll get back to you straight away.