Leo Lipis

Chief Executive at Lipis Advisors https://www.lipisadvisors.com

Message Posts: 3 Comments: 1

Bio Leo is the founder of Lipis Advisors and has over 25 years of experience in payment systems consulting and research on all six continents. Prior to founding Lipis Advisors in 2007, he held positions in payments strategy and analysis with commercial banks, clearing houses, and central banks. Leo works chiefly in transaction banking, payment system strategy & design, and treasury management.

Blogs

SEPA and European Payments

What does the European Commission's proposed regulation on instant payments mean for the industry?

16 Feb 2023

In October 2022 the European Commission (EC) announced a legislative proposal to make instant payments in euros available to all citizens with a bank account in the EU/EEA. In short, the EC proposal contains four major initiatives: All Payment Service Providers (PSPs) that already offer credit transfers in euros (excluding payment institutions an...

Payments strategies 2015-2020-2030

2022’s Biggest Payment Trends: Instant Payments, Fraud, Strides in CBDCs, and XB Payments

05 Dec 2022

2022 was a year of major announcements and developments in instant payments, digital currencies, and cross-border payments. The European Commission plans to mandate the adoption and regulate the price of real-time payments in Europe. As real-time payment systems are rolled out across the world, we’ve seen fraud migrate toward these systems, especi...

BNPL

What’s next for BNPL?

30 Jun 2022

There has been a lot of news recently around Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), such as Apple’s announcement of a BNPL solution, Revolut rolling out its ‘Pay Later’ product in Ireland, as well as proposed regulations in the UK. BNPL is certainly a hot topic in many markets, but some service providers have been struggling with issues such as valuation, whil...

See all Leo's blogs

Leo is Commenting on

What’s next for BNPL?

Hi Ketharaman, Thanks for your comment. I welcome the debate and respectfully disagree. At least three of the big BNPL companies (Klarna, Affirm, AfterPay) made a loss in 2021 and I don’t think an MDR of 4-6% is sustainable in any case. Many of the business cases around BNPL services were created in a 0% or, at the very least, a low interest rate environment. Given how quickly interest rates and inflation are now rising in advanced economies, I am skeptical that business models that were built on these assumptions can survive without serious changes. Moreover, high inflation is squeezing both consumers and merchants, and the very target audience for BNPL services are also more likely than other target groups to be hit hard by inflation and are therefore more likely to struggle to make repayment. Add in the lack of regulation (and indeed looming regulation as the example of the UK shows) and the trend of consumers having multiple open BNPL accounts adds complicating factors. While I do think BNPL has a place in the future marketplace, I don’t think it will achieve the dominance that some predict.

05 Jul 2022 Reply Read article