London-based subscription payment platform Raylo has raised £6.5 million ($7.87 million) in additional funding, which will help it expand its data and engineering teams and accelerate the debut of a subscription service, according to a Tech Funding News report from Monday (July). 4).
Raylo also received a strategic investment from Wayra UK, part of Telefónica. The company plans to use the funding to introduce its Raylo Pay offering, and retailers that add the option to their register will be able to offer consumers products through new flexible, monthly plans.
This is due to increased consumer demand for affordable payment options, including buy now, pay later (BNPL), which allow people to pay for purchases in fixed installments.
However, the report said there is a lack of solutions for larger items such as consumer electronics, and this field has had issues before including affordability and checkout conversion.
“We are delighted that Telefónica shares our vision of bringing our Raylo Pay solution to retailers in the UK and beyond,” said Raylo Co-Founder and CEO Karl Gilbert. “Subscriptions are a fundamentally better way to sell any sustainable product with a regular upgrade cycle – retailers enjoy a significant increase in conversions, consumers pay a fraction of the cost each month, and we avoid the waste encouraged by other payment models.”
Founded in 2018, Raylo is said to provide consumers with a way to pay retailers “upfront and in full” with no purchase fees.
As such, customers only pay a portion of the cost during the subscription period – and when they’re ready to upgrade, they get old products back, where those products enter the process of “refurb and recommerce.”
PYMNTS recently wrote that Finastra, a UK-based FinTech, has rolled out an embedded consumer lending product to help clients access “traditional regulated lending options.”
Also see: Finastra launches alternative BNPL tool
This gives customers a new “frictionless” buying process with access to BNPL, “which often doesn’t apply to high-value purchases.”
