Visa has introduced a suite of APIs to help financial institutions and retailers offer their customers the option to pay off instore and online purchases in instalments.
Instalment payments is a fast growing sector, with nearly three in four credit cardholders in the US believing that the option is helpful for budgeting and 70% saying it helps alleviate the stress of large purchases.
The space has been occupied by a host of startups, cherry picking a market overlooked by the big incumbents and nibbling at the market share of giant card schemes.
Visa's new instalment APIs will make it easy for firms to give shoppers the ability to pay using Visa cards, splitting the purchase amount into smaller, equal payments over a defined time.
The suite is part of the new Visa Next platform, a site giving issuers and merchants access to a host of APIs and development tools for building and testing digital payment products.