Abercrombie & Fitch is adding Venmo to its app, and the Hollister app, in an effort to bring a payment option geared towards millennials to its platform. The apps are important to the retailer’s resurgence — they’re the digital channels seeing the most growth for the company, Bloomberg reported.
Venmo, which is owned by PayPal Holdings, Inc., is popular with young consumers that like online payments and don’t carry much cash. In the year leading up to June 30, Venmo processed a payment volume of more than $46 billion dollars. After it opened up to merchants in 2017, a variety of retailers have begun to offer Venmo as a payment option.
In July, Uber and Venmo announced that they were partnering to deliver a new payment experience for Uber and Uber Eats. In a press release, PayPal said that more than six million payments on Venmo mentioned Uber over the past year, making integration between the two apps a natural fit.
“Adding Venmo as a way to pay within Uber and Uber Eats furthers our mission to provide a seamless way to pay for the services that matter most to our customers,” said Bill Ready, chief operating officer at PayPal. “Whether it’s splitting a ride home after a night out, or sharing a meal during a night in, paying with Venmo provides our customers with a convenient and fun way to split and share these experiences with friends.”
According to the companies, customers in the U.S. who are ordering food and rides via Uber will soon be able to pay with their Venmo balance, linked bank account, credit card or debit card, allowing them to split the cost with friends and family in the Venmo app at no extra fee. The companies also said users can share their purchases in their Venmo feeds with custom emojis that are exclusive to the partnership.
Brazil’s instant payment system, Pix, will reportedly allow users to pay for transactions in installments, beginning in September.
The new feature, Pix Parcelado, will be available to both consumers and businesses, Reuters reported Thursday (April 3), citing Brazil’s central bank.
While payers will have the option to pay over time, payees will receive the full payment immediately, according to the report.
“The feature has the potential to boost Pix usage in retail for higher-value purchases, benefiting those without access to traditional credit options,” the central bank said, per the report.
The central bank also said it will add another feature that will allow future Pix receivables to be used as collateral for credit operations, according to the report. This feature is set to debut in 2026.
Forty-three percent of Brazilian consumers use the Pix instant payments platform daily, compared to 29% who rely on credit cards and 21% who use cash, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Galileo collaboration, “Promising Payments: Digital Payments Gain Ground in Latin America.”
The report also found that 82% of Pix users report the payment method has a positive impact on their daily lives and that Brazilian consumers also embrace digital banking, with 95% of consumer interactions with banks occurring through digital channels.
Pix was launched at the end of 2020 but quickly bloomed in popularity, in large part due to the instant payment platform’s simplicity and ease of use, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Kushki collaboration, “Digitizing Payments in Latin America Playbook.”
Pix is also set to add a recurring payments feature called Automatic Pix that will be able to be used as a payment method by companies of different sizes and in different sectors.
“For the paying user, Automatic Pix will bring even more convenience, offering a frictionless recurring payment alternative,” Brazil’s central bank said in July. “With prior authorization, given in the account’s secure environment by the access device itself (cell phone or computer), the user will allow periodic debit automatically, without the need for authentication for each transaction.”
“For the receiving user, Automatic Pix has the potential to increase efficiency, reduce the costs of collection features and reduce default,” the central bank added.
