The race to reach consumers at checkout continues to intensify.

Installment payment platform Splitit recently integrated with the payments infrastructure giant Stripe to draw new clients and speed up its onboarding process. 

“Before, we were partnering with multiple different payment gateways in multiple different instances, which made it complex, slow and cumbersome for our merchants,” said Brad Paterson, CEO of Splitit. The Stripe integration was confirmed by the company last week.  

The improvements realized by the partnership should help Splitit encourage more merchants to join its platform; with Stripe providing the back-end payments infrastructure, Paterson said Splitit will be able to onboard clients in minutes, a process that currently takes about a week. Splitit will pay a small percentage of transactions to Stripe, but the company didn’t offer further details on the revenue-sharing arrangement. 

Splitit functions almost like a point-of-sale lender, except the company doesn’t actually extend credit to consumers. According to the Splitit website, the company requests an authorization from the shopper’s card company, reserving the total purchase amount from the shopper’s available line of credit. Each month, according to the shopper’s payment plan, the installment amount is collected and Splitit requests authorization for the remaining balance. 

See also: Affirm rolls out virtual card for checkout loans

Paterson said the majority of Splitit’s merchants are e-commerce sellers, but the company’s platform has in-store capabilities as well. According to Paterson, Splitit has more than 700 merchants using its services, and the average order value is more than $800, and revenue is generated from fees charged to merchants using its platform. The company said in a statement that Splitit increases the average order value of its merchants by more than 80%. Its merchants include GlassesUSA, James Allen and Simba.  

Splitit is part of a growing number of companies offering installment payment options to merchants and their customers. Competitors like Klarna, Affirm and AfterPay all offer financing options for consumers at checkout. Meanwhile, banks like Citizens Bank and Ally Financial are increasingly moving into point-of-sale loan capabilities. 

Splitit has raised more than $28 million since it was established in 2012. The company is publicly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.  

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