Mastercard, Pine Labs to roll out pay later service in five Southeast Asian markets

With the Asia Pacific region seeing a rise in demand for consumer borrowing solutions, Mastercard and Pine Labs plan to expand their ‘pay later’ service to five Southeast Asian markets by early 2021. 

The service will let the consumers avail zero-interest instalments on purchases while expanding businesses for merchants, banks, fintech, payment gateways and device makers.

Beyond the existing India and Malaysia markets, the solution will be launched in Thailand and the Philippines in February, followed shortly by Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia. 

According to a study by Coherent Market Insights, the global pay later market is expected to grow from $7.3 billion in 2019 to $33.6 billion in 2027 at an annual rate of over 21%. The market intelligence and consulting group sees Asia Pacific as the fastest-growing region.

“For merchants, being able to offer instalments at checkout directly influences consumer buying behavior that leads to an increase in the average ticket size, reduces cart abandonment and results in higher sales,” Sandeep Malhotra, executive vice president, Products & Innovation, Asia Pacific, Mastercard said in a statement.

In January, Pine Labs raised an undisclosed sum from Mastercard. The company processes more than $30 billion of payments per year, serves about 150,000 merchants across 450,000 network points in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.