Who will win the buy now, pay later battle?

Jessica Sier and James Eyers

Jul 16, 2021 – 3.00pm

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When Lucille Ruehland saw that PayPal had launched its buy now, pay later feature this week, she realised her e-commerce site checkout page was soon going to look pretty crowded.

With Afterpay, Zip, and Klarna already activated to give her customers ways to pay in instalments for her online children’s print store, Ruehland was expecting to add in CBA’s StepPay over the next few months.

Jessica Sier is the North Asia Correspondent for The Australian Financial Review. She is based in Tokyo, Japan. Jessica has previously written on technology, global capital markets and economics.

James Eyers writes on banking, finance, payments, regulation and emerging technologies. Based in Sydney, he is a former legal and investment banking editor at the AFR and has been a business journalist for more than 20 years.