What rising buy-now-pay-later adoption means for conversion strategy

Buy-now-pay-later adoption has grown enough in several categories — fashion, home, electronics — that its absence at checkout can function as a genuine conversion blocker for a meaningful share of customers, not just a nice-to-have payment option.

For higher-average-order-value categories specifically, offering an instalment option at the point of decision, not buried in a footer link, has become a legitimate conversion lever worth testing directly.

The consideration this raises for retention and margin planning: BNPL provider fees affect net margin per order, and that needs to factor into the acquisition cost ceiling and lifetime value model the same way payment processing fees always have.