Splitit Ltd (ASX: SPT) shares are edging higher after the company announced the launch of a new payment gateway designed exclusively for instalment payments. At the time of writing, the Splitit share price is trading 0.63% higher at 80.5 cents.
Let's take a closer look at the company's latest news.
What's driving the Splitit share price?
The Splitit share price is in the green today after the company announced that, following a successful beta phase, it has launched 'Splitit Plus' to merchants across the United States. A wider global rollout is expected to commence in the second half of this year.
Splitit shares have been struggling this week after the fintech released what some believed to be a less than impressive first-quarter update yesterday.
The new platform, Splitit Plus, is an integrated payment gateway that has been built through leveraging the company's partnership with US payment processing giant, Stripe.
According to Splitit, the technology "provides merchants an all-in-one platform combining Splitit's instalment payment technology with a card processing solution for the instalments". This allows for a more seamless activation process in which merchants can offer instalment payments on credit cards to customers on the same day.
Splitit CEO Brad Paterson commented on the new feature, saying:
We created Splitit Plus with a customer-first approach to provide an exceptional merchant experience with Splitit. This innovation of a payment gateway built exclusively for installments makes it a fast, simple solution for merchants of any size to begin accepting installment payments in minutes.
Splitit Plus to drive revenues
According to Splitit, the new offering is expected to result in incremental revenues for the company as it will now receive a payment processing fee on top of its existing instalment fees. This will be charged to merchants at a simplified, all-in-one rate.
Paterson believes the simplified merchant experience and onboarding process should accelerate merchant acquisition in the future. He said:
We believe that Splitit Plus puts us in a strong position to continue our exciting growth trajectory. Offering a faster and simpler onboarding experience and all-in-one fee structure allows us to accelerate merchant acquisition for smaller and larger merchants alike, while meeting the growing demand from merchants to add Splitit to their site or store.
Splitit share price playing catch up
The Splitit share price has been significantly underperforming buy now, pay later (BNPL) leaders such as Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) and Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) lately.
The company's quarterly update on Wednesday revealed negative quarter-on-quarter growth. This signals a diverging performance between Splitit and its BNPL counterparts. Year to date, Splitit shares have fallen by around 38%. However, the company's shares are still up by around 70% over the past 12 months.
