Missguided adds pay later option as app shopping surges

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 8, 2019

Missguided said in its latest set of results that it’s focusing heavily on its core e-tail offer to boost its profits, and evidence of this has come fast with news that the company has added pay-later tech to its app.

It has worked with tech/payment specialists Klarna, Poq and Stripe, to add a service that allows customers to order goods and pay as much as 30 days later through Klarna’s Pay Later product.

Unlike many retailers that offer post-delivery payment options, there are no fees and no interest added on to the bill.

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But it seems that many of the companies that earn extra income from charging such interest could find that time is running out for them. Interest-free try-on-first-then-pay-later options have become increasingly important to the bigger e-tail operators in the last year or so as they fight for market share in a highly competitive marketplace. Amazon and Asos have both pioneered the service.

It’s something that’s clearly going to be a bigger feature of the online fashion retail market in future with consumers already showing signs that they’ll order more from e-tailers that offer the option, so it's understandable that Missguided would want a piece of that action.

The introduction was overseen by just-departed chief digital officer Jonathan Wall who said it was driven by customer demand.

It’s also an important boost for the firm's app that already accounts for over 30% of mobile orders at Missguided. App shopping is growing quickly at fast fashion e-tailers and new services designed to add to app convenience and replicate some of the advantages that physical stores have (such as being able to try on multiple items without paying for them first) can only boost that growth.