Pledg and Budget Insight partner with BNPL

The French fintech specialised in fragmented payment solutions, Pledg, has just found a new strong partner in its fight to democratise BNPL. This time it is Budget Insight, the French reference in account aggregation. This merger underlines the dynamism of the market and the ambition of its players to respond to the criticisms it is generating.

FACTS

• Pledg and Budget Insight will now work together. Pledg will actually use the Budget Insight Bank product of its new partner, its B2B account aggregator, to access the banking data of more than 2000 European financial institutions via Open Banking.

• The objective for Pledg? To know the creditworthiness of the end users of its fractional payment solutions in less than a minute.

• The system should thus allow for the seamless integration of a financing agreement solution (fractional or deferred payment) within the customer's journey.

CHALLENGES

• Countering criticism: The main objective of Pledg and Budget Insight is to pool their expertise in order to counter the risk of insolvency of BNPL's clients, a risk that has now been assumed.

• Internationalising its offer: With this new consumer protection safeguard, Pledg hopes to be able to expand its offer more easily internationally. The FinTech currently has 400 customers in France and Europe, and was already counting on a partnership, signed with Allianz Trade a short time ago, to open its solution to the European BtoB market.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• The BNPL market and its players are coming under increasing fire in a context marked by inflation and declining purchasing power. Although fractional or deferred payment solutions have been presented since their launch by market players as practical payment alternatives, they nevertheless represent new risks of overindebtedness.

• The authorities are mobilising throughout the world to ensure a stricter framework and to protect consumers from problems linked to the lack of transparency of offers in particular.

• However, this context does not seem to limit the enthusiasm of the players involved, and the prospects of this emerging market are even encouraging new financial service providers to position themselves, such as Budget Insight.