PayPal Expands ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Option To France

Qualified customers who make purchases in France via PayPal can now pay in four equal installments over three months, San Jose, California-based PayPal Holdings said in a news release on Tuesday (June 30).

Merchants will be paid in full immediately, PayPal said. Purchases must fall between 100 euros and 2,000 euros, or between about $112 and $2,240.

The program, which is being extended to France as part of PayPal’s digital wallet offerings, should be especially helpful for small business owners, who are often excluded from France’s existing popular installment payment programs, PayPal said in its statement.

According to a 2019 survey of nearly 2,000 people in France performed for PayPal by CSA Research: “Online installments are incredibly popular with French consumers: 64 percent of users would have postponed or not completed their purchase without an installment option available, and 84 percent are more likely to shop again at a retailer who offers installments.”

PayPal already offers similar financing in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

In the U.S., PayPal’s installment payment programs produced more than $50 billion in transactions during the first 10 years after their 2008 launch, the company said in a 2019 news release.

In an SEC filing earlier this year, PayPal said its charge-off rate on consumer loans was about 4.1 percent in fiscal 2019, which ended Dec. 31, 2019. The charge-off rate is loan losses as a percentage of the overall loan and interest receivables. For fiscal 2019, an average of about 2 percent of loans were 90 days or more past due.

For fiscal 2019, PayPal reported net income of $2.5 billion, $2.09 per share, on revenue of $17.8 billion.

In another expansion outside its historic business lines, PayPal said last week that it was expanding its cryptocurrency-related offerings for customers.