Nexi, the European PayTech leader, and Compass, the Mediobanca Group’s consumer credit arm, are consolidating their strategic partnership in the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) segment by expanding it to include the e-commerce channel as well.

This extension of the partnership will involve PagoLight, Compass's proprietary, full-digital BNPL solution, being integrated into XPay, the e-commerce payment gateway developed by Nexi. Through this partnership, merchants will be able to offer their clients an innovative solution for deferring their online payments, replicating the same service available at physical POS via the online channels too.

At the checkout phase of their e-commerce purchases, customers will now have the option to pay by instalments using the Buy Now Pay Later formula, as an alternative to the other forms of payment, receiving the result of their application in the space of just a few minutes thanks to a simple, intuitive process.

The partnership between the two companies, both of which have always been strongly focused on innovation, will enable Nexi to make a useful service available to its clients, helping it to leverage the business opportunities offered by the Buy Now Pay Later solution, which are particularly significant in the e-commerce sector. In 2023, the annual volume of transactions completed via BNPL in online commerce reached approximately €3.5bn, according to Milan Polytechnic University estimates, 81% higher than the previous year.

“Our objective is to put merchants in a position where they are able to offer their clients the best available solutions on the market, which will allow them to leverage all business opportunities generated by digital payments”, said Andrea Gaboardi, Head of e-commerce at Nexi Italia. “We also aim to ensure that consumers have convenient and safe payment solutions, that guarantee simple and secure purchasing processes. Extending the partnership that we signed with Compass at the end of 2023 to include e-commerce will allow us to take a further step in this direction.”

For Compass, this consolidation of the partnership represents an exceptional opportunity to significantly expand the take-up of PagoLight through digital channels. Launched in 2021, PagoLight is now operational in over 1,000 digital stores, while in the physical channel it is active in over 25,000 POS, and the network is continually growing, with over 1,000 new activations per month, helped also by being integrated with Nexi SmartPOS.

“Extending our partnership with Nexi to include e-commerce is a very important step forward for us. The native integration of PagoLight into the XPay payment gateway will offer merchants an important driver to increase sales and loyalty retention amount clients,” said Luigi Pace, Central Manager of Marketing and Innovation at Compass. “A recent survey of PagoLight users showed that 47% would not have completed their purchase if this option had not been available, while virtually all those interviewed said that PagoLight is a ‘decisive factor’ in them returning to make other purchases via the same e-commerce website. Through this partnership with Nexi, Compass has strengthened its multichannel coverage in BNPL, with the ambition to further consolidate its leadership in the sector.”