UK Subscription Payment Platform Raylo Raises $7.8M

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 pay service, according to a Tech Funding News report Monday (July 4).

Raylo also received a strategic investment from Wayra UK, which is part of Telefónica. The company plans to use the funding to debut its Raylo Pay offering, and retailers who add the option to their checkout will be able to offer consumers products through new flexible, monthly subscriptions.

This comes amid increased consumer demand for affordable payment options, including buy now, pay later (BNPL), which allows people to pay for purchases in set installments.

However, the report said there’s a lack of solutions for bigger items like consumer electronics, and that field has faced issues before including affordability and checkout conversion.

“We are delighted that Telefónica shares our vision of bringing our Raylo Pay solution to retailers across the UK and beyond,” said Raylo co-founder and CEO Karl Gilbert. “Subscriptions are a fundamentally better way to sell any durable product with a regular upgrade cycle — retailers enjoy a significant conversion uplift, consumers pay a fraction of the cost each month, and we avoid the wastefulness that has been encouraged under other payment models.”

Raylo was founded in 2018 and reportedly gives consumers a way to pay retailers “upfront and in full” with zero fees, for any purchases.

As such, customers will only pay part of the cost during the subscription term — and when they’re ready to upgrade, they will get old products returned, where those products will enter the process of “refurb and recommerce.”

PYMNTS recently wrote that Finastra, a British FinTech, has rolled out an embedded consumer lending product to help out with access to “traditional regulated lending options” for customers.

See also: Finastra Launches BNPL Alternative Tool

This will allow customers to get a new “frictionless” buying process with access to BNPL, “which is often not applicable to high-value purchases.”