We are thrilled to announce that ChargeAfter has been nominated for 4 prestigious Furniture Today Reader Ranking Awards. The nominations reflect the success of our embedded lending platform in delivering financing personalization and choice to merchants’ points of sale, thanks to our phenomenal team’s hard work and dedication.
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If you want to see ChargeAfter recognized for its industry-leading platform, we would appreciate it if you would take a moment to vote. It only takes a couple of minutes. Here’s what you need to do:
As the holiday season approaches, retailers are gearing up to make the most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2024. These shopping events have become critical for driving sales, and your strategies can make all the difference in your success. In this article, we share essential insights and actionable tips to help you optimize your approach.
Optimizing mobile experiences
With a significant portion of holiday shopping conducted on mobile devices, it’s essential that your website is mobile-friendly. Fast loading times, easy navigation, and a straightforward checkout process are crucial.
According to MobiLaud, 59% of Black Friday sales came from smartphones, a 55% increase from the previous year. Ensuring a seamless mobile experience can significantly reduce bounce rates and increase conversions, contributing to higher sales.
Leveraging social media for targeted ads
Investing in targeted social media advertising can drive traffic and conversions. Personalized ads resonate more with potential buyers, capturing their interest and encouraging them to visit your site. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok offer powerful tools for targeted campaigns, allowing you to reach a broader audience and engage with them meaningfully.
Effective social media strategies enhance brand visibility and attract more shoppers during the holiday season.
Ensuring seamless checkout processes
A smooth and quick checkout process can reduce cart abandonment, making the difference between a lost sale and a loyal customer. Streamlining the checkout process involves minimizing the steps required to complete a purchase, offering multiple payment options, and ensuring that the process is secure and user-friendly.
According to SaleCycle, the cart abandonment rate for Black Friday was 76.63%, and for Cyber Monday, it reached 80.25%. A seamless checkout experience can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and encourage repeat purchases.
Offering flexible financing options
Providing multiple financing options can significantly impact customer satisfaction and conversion rates. Shoppers who used a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service spent $598 on average on Black Friday, compared to $452 among those who didn’t use a deferred payment method (PYMNTS Intelligence).
By integrating platforms like ChargeAfter, retailers can offer a variety of financing options, catering to individual customer needs and enhancing the overall shopping experience. This flexibility is crucial during the high-traffic holiday season when shoppers are looking for the best deals and convenient payment methods.
Starting early: the early bird strategy
For the past several years, consumers have shown eagerness to sign up for brand email and text lists around Halloween. They know the holiday season is approaching and don’t want to miss out on sales or inventory announcements. While capturing opt-ins should be a year-round effort, Halloween is an ideal time to ramp up these efforts.
Retail trends show that holiday sales start earlier each year, meaning all product messaging, campaigns, email triggers, and identity strategies should be tested and ready to run by Halloween.
Website Pop-Ups: Use pop-ups with special offers or sign-up incentives after visitors have been on your site for a certain duration or just as they’re about to leave.
Influencers: Collaborate with influencers to create unique content that resonates with their audience. Partner for product giveaways or contests to boost visibility and engagement.
Social Media: Develop engaging content with polls, quizzes, and user-generated content. Create stories and reels on platforms like Instagram and TikTok for limited-time offers or behind-the-scenes looks.
Paid Ads: Launch retargeting ad campaigns to show ads to users who visited your site but didn’t make a purchase. Use platforms like Facebook to target lookalike audiences, reaching users similar to your existing customers.
Act now to unlock Black Friday / Cyber Monday success
To truly capitalize on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2024, start preparing now. Focus on optimizing mobile experiences, leveraging social media for targeted ads, ensuring seamless checkout processes, and offering flexible financing options like those provided by ChargeAfter. Boost sales, reduce cart abandonment, and create a memorable shopping experience that keeps customers coming back—retailers who use ChargeAfter see up to 85% POS financing approval rates.
Integrating the ChargeAfter platform is seamless and easy, with plenty of time to get set up before the holiday rush. Plus, our merchant portal is packed with powerful data and insights to help you manage lenders effortlessly and supercharge your post-season strategies.
Want to see how ChargeAfter can transform your holiday season sales?Schedule a demo with ChargeAfter today and unlock the potential of personalized financing!
Are you among the 78% of merchants prioritizing POS financing in the next 12-18 months*? If so, let’s connect! Our team is heading to MAG Payments and is available to discuss your POS financing challenges and see how our multi-lender waterfall platform can help you maximize your point-of-sale financing potential. Visit us at booth 214 or schedule a meeting with us. Swing by and you have a chance of winning a cool prize!
Panel Discussion
We are excited to invite you to attend our panel discussion Check your Balances: How Financial Inclusion is Defining a Generation with some of the biggest names in the industry.
Meidad Sharon – CEO & Founder, ChargeAfter
Jai Holtz – Vice President, Financial Services, Best Buy
Jay Waters, Senior Director Financial Services, Lowe’s Company Inc.
For merchants selling to business customers, offering a robust point-of-sale B2B financing offer leads to improved customer acquisition, customer retention, and business growth. Traditionally, retailers have struggled to provide financing options that meet the needs of small and medium-sized business customers, as most B2B financing providers offer net terms that are only suitable for large companies. However, this is changing.
What’s changing in point-of-sale B2B financing
Point-of-sale B2B financing is undergoing a transformation, driven by technological advancements and the emergence of fintech lenders who are addressing the unique needs of SMBs. Unlike traditional financing providers that offer limited and inflexible terms, these new entrants provide more adaptable and accessible financing solutions. SMBs seek terms that extend to 12 months, and beyond. They want to apply and buy quickly with instant credit decisions that reflect their experience as individual consumers. New players such as Credit Key and Tabit present such an opportunity. When integrated into an embedded lending platform, such as ChargeAfter, they enable merchants to seamlessly offer SMBs access to the capital they need to grow and compete more effectively right at the point of sale.
“B2B transactions have many unique requirements including split shipments, customer-specific pricing, invoicing, in-house lines of credit, and flexible payment terms. Combine that with a complex omni-channel experience and manual approval processes that depend on legacy systems, and you have a recipe for a massive delta in customer experience expectations. Through our partnership with ChargeAfter, merchants can provide the B2C experience that customers expect for their B2B customers in ALL of their sales channels.” James R Wallen, Vice President of Sales, Credit Key
There are specific challenges in B2B financing that make it difficult to provide, especially to smaller businesses. Understanding these complexities emphasizes how valuable it is when retailers get it right.
Larger and more complex transactions: B2B transactions often involve bulk purchases, customer-specific pricing, split shipments, unique invoice requirements, and integrations to back office and ERP systems.
Use of traditional credit and financing options: Many businesses rely on familiar, traditional payment options such as Net Terms which are ubiquitous in B2B, overlooking innovative funding solutions, which dramatically increase revenue and share of wallet to the merchant
Longer risk and compliance assessment processes: Assessing business creditworthiness is more intricate and time-consuming than evaluating individual credit scores. Data that is available to assess risk for small and medium-sized businesses is limited and fragmented leading to long, cumbersome processes to open a new account.
“Business owners expect a seamless customer journey, mirroring their experiences as customers. This includes access to point-of-sale financing solutions suitable for different types of businesses at the point-of-sale.” Elias Beaino, Executive Vice President of Tabit by Merchant Growth.
Benefits of advanced B2B financing solutions
There are many benefits to meeting the needs of SMB customers, they include:
Enhanced customer acquisition and retention: By offering flexible financing options, merchants can attract more business customers who might otherwise be unable to afford large purchases upfront. This not only boosts customer acquisition but also fosters loyalty, as customers appreciate the support in managing their cash flow.
Increased sales and revenue: With better financing options, SMBs are more likely to make larger purchases, thereby increasing the average transaction value. This translates to higher sales and revenue for merchants.
Streamlined operations: Modern B2B financing solutions often come with integrated platforms that automate and simplify the financing process. This reduces the administrative burden on merchants and allows them to focus more on their core business activities.
Improved cash flow management: For SMBs, managing cash flow is crucial. By using the lender’s funds to purchase inventory, merchants can preserve their working capital for other essential business operations, such as marketing, hiring staff, or expanding their business, ensuring they can maintain operations without financial strain.
The easiest and most efficient way to offer lending options to your business customers is through an embedded lending platform. With a platform-first approach, retailers easily manage their entire point-of-sale financing offer customized for businesses as well as for their individual customers in a single platform. Benefits of a platform-first approach to point-of-sale B2B financing include:
Fast access to multiple B2B and B2C financing options.
Centralized management of lending and post-sales activities.
Embedded regulatory and compliance requirements.
Customizable point-of-sale checkout with white labeling.
Enhanced customer and lender relationships.
Improved approval rates, sales conversion, and order value.
The transformation within the B2B financing sector is driven by the adoption of new technologies, innovative market players, and customer-centric solutions. These advancements streamline processes and introduce greater flexibility and efficiency. Embracing these changes allows businesses to enhance financial strategies, improve customer relations, and secure a sustainable competitive advantage.
Kevin has worked in the banking and finance industry for over a decade. He has worked closely with some of North America’s largest banks, financial institutions, and retailers. Kevin is an expert in embedded consumer financing and B2B financing and has a deep understanding of current trends and where the industry is heading.
Only 2% of merchants achieve approval rates above 80%, a sharp decline from 12% last year.
Point-of-sale (POS) financing has become a crucial resource for shoppers to purchase the goods they want without relying on credit cards and for retailers to enhance customer satisfaction and drive sales. We conducted our second annual survey to understand how merchants are meeting their customers’ financing needs and the challenges they face. The results shed light on the current state of POS financing, revealing an over 50% increase in merchants reporting below 60% approval rates.
Key Findings
Among the key findings, the survey discovered that an average of 40% of annual gross merchant value (GMV) is attributed to financing. Despite the crucial role of consumer financing in sales revenue, most merchants are struggling with approval rates, which have sharply declined compared to last year. In 2024, only 2% of merchants are achieving approval rates above 80%, a sharp decline from last year’s 12%
Retailers recognize the need to address these declining approval rates with 78% of respondents saying that point-of-sale financing is a strategic priority over the next 12 months.
Unlock the Full Report
For a deeper dive into the survey’s findings, download the full report “Point-of-Sale Financing: Key Trends and Retailer Insights 2024 – 2025 here.
About Varda Bachrach Varda has over 20 years of experience in marketing, content, and communications, most recently in fintech start ups where she loves simplifying complex messages.
We are thrilled to share that ChargeAfter is the technology provider behind HP’s newly expanded consumer financing offering This exciting collaboration empowers nearly every U.S. consumer with the purchasing power to acquire their favorite HP products through flexible financing options available on HP.com.
HP’s new consumer financing program leverages ChargeAfter’s cutting-edge technology and network of lenders, with Bread Financial, Concora, and Koalafi providing financing options for consumers across all credit tiers. In a single online application, consumers are instantly matched with the most suitable lender for their specific needs, thanks to our sophisticated waterfall technology.
Additionally, ChargeAfter’s platform simplifies the management of post-sale transactions and communications with lenders, providing the HP team with comprehensive visibility, control, and access to detailed analytics and insights.
The collaboration with HP showcases ChargeAfter’s pivotal role as a partner in revolutionizing point-of-sale financing for major retailers.
Leading retailers recognize the strategic importance of point-of-sale (POS) financing to attract interest-weary shoppers, especially during this period of uncertain economic conditions. When implemented correctly, POS financing becomes an essential tool to boost conversion and customer satisfaction.
In May, the Federal Reserve reported that consumers are preparing for continued inflation, yet they remain undeterred from shopping. The April Survey of Consumer Expectations shows that spending is projected to grow by 5.2% over the next year. This underscores the importance of providing flexible and appealing financing options at the point of sale.
The Strategic Importance of POS Financing
A well-executed POS financing offer meets the customer at their moment of need, offering a fast and seamless experience. ChargeAfter data shows that merchants who adopt a multi-lender waterfall financing model with solutions for prime, near-prime, and subprime shoppers, can achieve up to 85% approval rates. This model ensures that a wide range of customers can access financing options that suit their credit profiles, expanding the potential customer base and increasing conversion rates.
Moreover, recent data gathered by ChargeAfter reveals that only 2% of retailers achieve at least 80% approval rates, highlighting the competitive advantage of implementing a robust POS financing strategy.
Multi-Lender Waterfall Model: A Path to Higher Approval Rates
However, merely offering access to multiple lenders is insufficient. A well-executed POS financing offer must meet customers at their moment of need, whether they are shopping in-store, online, through call centers, or even in-home. It should provide a fast and seamless experience in real-time and deliver choice and personalization.
Integrate Multiple Lenders with an Embedded Lending Platform
To seamlessly integrate multiple lenders into omnichannel points of sale with a single application, an embedded lending platform is essential. As well as delivering customers with instant access to the best-fit financing options, it provides numerous benefits for retailers. These benefits include fast and easy integration, comprehensive post-sale management, lender redundancy, visibility and control, and financing data in a single integrated solution. ChargeAfter is the platform of choice for America’s top retailers. In a single technical integration, ChargeAfter not only makes it easy to unlock a network of lenders but also removes the burden of managing multiple lenders, including taking care of sensitive PII, terms and conditions, disclosures, etc.
Effective Marketing Strategies to Promote Financing Options
Of course, retailers need to communicate to buyers that financing is available within the shopping journey. One way to do this is through marketing campaigns. Another effective way is to communicate with shoppers throughout their purchasing journey. For example, retailers can add promotional widgets on their eCommerce websites, embed financing into the checkout process, and invite customers to apply for pre-qualification, which can also be used in-store. In-store signage with QR codes enables customers to apply for financing on their mobile devices, facilitating purchasing decisions.
Signage regarding POS financing availability at self-checkout and traditional checkout ensures shoppers can confidently continue their journey, knowing that POS financing can help them buy the desired goods. In the context of persistent inflation and evolving consumer spending habits, retailers must adopt diverse financing options to attract and retain customers.
The Competitive Advantage of Embracing Innovative POS Financing Solutions
Retailers who embrace innovative POS financing solutions will be well-positioned to drive sales, boost customer satisfaction, and maintain a competitive edge in the market. By adopting a multi-lender waterfall model through a platform, retailers can offer a seamless and personalized financing experience that meets the diverse needs of their customers. Effective marketing strategies further enhance the visibility and appeal of these financing options, ensuring that customers are well-informed and confident in their purchasing decisions. ChargeAfter is the platform of choice for America’s top retailers.
Mark has worked in the near-prime and tertiary lending space for 30 years. As EVP of Merchants Sales & Success at ChargeAfter, he is responsible for ensuring merchants and lenders get the best care possible.
With consumer finance projected to reach $15 trillion by 2025 (GlobalData, 2021), stringent regulatory frameworks are needed to ensure stability and protect consumers. The rapid expansion of digital financial services, highlighted by the surge of point-of-sale financing, emphasizes the importance of robust regulatory measures.
As banks expand their lending models and reenter the consumer financing market, their strict regulatory frameworks and compliance expertise provide a significant competitive advantage. Banks have been lending institutions for centuries, offering various loans including mortgages, personal, consumer, and business loans. Over the years, they have developed robust compliance processes and deep regulatory expertise, especially compared to fintech companies such as BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) providers, many of whom are new to lending.
Regulatory Scrutiny in Consumer Finance
As the consumer finance sector has grown in popularity and scale, it has inevitably drawn the attention of regulatory bodies. Both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) have issued guidance and reports related to BNPL lending, emphasizing the need for prudent practices and robust consumer protection measures. These regulatory efforts aim to address the increasing demand for consumer protection and financial stability in this rapidly expanding, unregulated sector.
Banks, with their extensive history of adapting to regulatory changes and ensuring compliance, are well-positioned to navigate these new standards, in contrast to BNPL providers which have been functioning without regulation and are going to have to play catch up. Additionally, BNPLs lack direct access to funds via customer deposits and the Federal Reserve further strengthens the banks’ position.
Beyond Compliance: Deep Understanding and Capacity
Banks’ experience with regulatory compliance goes beyond merely following rules; it encompasses a deep understanding of the rationale behind regulations, such as protecting consumers, ensuring fair practices, and maintaining the financial system’s integrity. They can anticipate regulatory changes in response to external and other contributing factors, for example advances in technology or issues affecting the economy, and proactively adapt their strategies and seamlessly integrate new requirements into their operations. Additionally, banks have dedicated teams and systems to monitor regulatory changes, assess their impact, and implement necessary adjustments. This institutional capacity for regulatory adaptation is crucial in an environment where financial regulations are increasingly complex and far-reaching.
Building Trust Through Compliance
Banks’ adherence to regulatory and compliance standards and stability reinforce trust among consumers and merchants. This trust is crucial in newer financing areas like consumer finance, where customers and merchants are still gauging the credibility and reliability of different financial providers. Banks can leverage their compliance expertise to differentiate themselves and position their financial products as better, safer, and more reliable. By doing so, compliance becomes a key part of the value proposition that banks offer to merchants and their customers.
Conclusion: Compliance as a Strategic Asset
The established processes for regulatory compliance in consumer financing are more than an operational requirement; with the introduction of regulations, it is becoming a strategic must. Fintechs and innovative financing models in the consumer financing space are under increasing scrutiny, while banks, with their long history and deep expertise in compliance, are uniquely positioned to navigate the complex regulatory landscape and provide a stable and trustworthy option for consumers and merchants alike.
Jeff has over 20 years of experience driving revenue through building global brand awareness, business development, marketing, and sales departments focused on consumer financing, fintech, and eCommerce.
