ANZ partners with Visa to bring buy now pay later to Aussie credit card customers

Today, ANZ Bank announced that it will add a buy now pay later (BNPL) service, supported by Visa, to its offerings.

This announcement comes six months after ANZ’s chief executive, Shayne Elliot, discussed his scepticism around the operations of the big BNPL services in a Sydney Morning Herald interview, labelling them “regulatory arbitrage”.

“I think the idea that buy now, pay later is somehow stealing business from cards is wildly exaggerated,” Elliot stated.

Despite this, ANZ has now partnered with Visa to bring the Visa Installments BNPL technology to Australian shoppers next year.

Through Visa Installments, financial institutions such as ANZ can add BNPL as an additional feature to their existing approved credit lines.

Once the service launches, ANZ customers will be able to select a BNPL financing option during checkout when paying with their ANZ credit card. This can be done at retailers that utilise Quest payment systems without any further steps than a regular payment.

It seems that key BNPL players such as Afterpay and Zip are putting pressure on big banks to offer customers alternative payment options beyond the traditional interest-based credit cards, as CommBank, Citi and Suncorp have all announced BNPL integration into select services.

The ANZ and Visa announcement also comes less than two weeks after Mastercard released information about its new Mastercard Installments service - a BNPL option that operates similarly to Visa Installments, to be launched in Australia with Qantas and Latitude Financial.

Australian consumers will probably welcome this recent BNPL boom. A recent Visa survey found that 90% of participants showed a high likelihood of using an instalments option from their issuing bank, and 85% said instalments would improve their relationship with their card provider.

“There is overwhelming demand in Australia for BNPL financing through consumers’ existing, trusted financial institution,” said Julian Potter, Visa’s group country manager for Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific.

“We’re proud to work with our long-standing partner, ANZ, on the first roll-out of Visa Installments that has been built from the ground up – at the network level – to be deployed in-store and across ecommerce channels without the need for consumers or businesses to do anything new. Now Australians’ credit cards can buy now, pay later, too.”

ANZ head of cards and personal lending, Mike Shurlin, said, “We are always on the lookout for products and services that add genuine value to our customers and the ability to make instalment payments is a key feature that many of them want.”

Want to find out more about Buy Now Pay Later options that are available in Australia right now? Check out our Buy Now Pay Later hub for more info!