Is Paythen a buy now, pay later service? How is it different?

No. Paythen is not a buy now pay later credit service like AfterPay. We use AfterPay as an example below, but the points below apply to most buy now, pay later services like Klarna, Affirm and many others.

Once you create a plan in Paythen, your customers get to choose to pay the full amount immediately or via a payment plan that you’ve defined. Both options require your customers to use their credit or debit card to pay. This means 100% of your customers can choose a payment plan option instead of only those that get approved for credit.

• AfterPay is a credit service. With Paythen, your customers can get get a payment plan, but they can use their existing credit or debit card to do so.
• AfterPay is like a mini-loan, with Paythen, there is no credit provided – this is not only more responsible, but also more flexible and better. Your customers get to choose how they want to pay, and which payment method they want to use, while you pay lower fees and deliver a better customer experience.
• AfterPay has a fixed 8 week repayment period. This is rigid, and can still be very high for high value items. With Paythen, you can set the payment plan interval to whatever you want – weekly, monthly, fortnightly, or any other custom interval – and you also choose how long it goes for.
• AfterPay takes away your direct relationship with your customer – and build their brand, instead of yours. With Paythen, there is little to no Paythen branding involved – we just give you the mechanism to offer split payments, while giving you the reporting and flexibility you need.
• AfterPay takes away a big chunk of your profit margin with each transaction. With Paythen, you get to decide – you pay a low 1.25% per transaction with no monthly or other fees. You do pay the payment processing fee to Stripe, which is the payment processor.
• Paythen is a complete billing and payment system that gives you ease of use, reporting and insights and important features for your customers whereas AfterPay and others are just credit providers.
• Paythen is built on top of Stripe – the world’s most popular (and in our opinion, the best) online payment processor. This means from day one, you can accept payments in hundreds of currencies.