Executive Summary

Many small and mid-sized merchants and the lenders that support them are losing sales and taking on unnecessary bad debt because installment and BNPL plans are fragmented across providers, channels, and reconciliation systems; there are roughly 25 million SMB merchants and lenders in the global addressable market, equating to a $12.0B opportunity at an average $480 ACV. Fragmentation creates inconsistent underwriting, fractured collections, and manual reconciliation that depress conversion and increase operational costs for both merchants and lenders. You could build a centralized installment management platform that orchestrates payment plans, underwriting, scheduling, collections, and accounting via a single API and embeddable SDKs, with white-label merchant dashboards and prebuilt connectors to major BNPL providers and gateways. The product should include an AI-driven risk engine for dynamic, granular credit decisions and personalized schedules, plus reconciliation and compliance modules to reduce bad debt and operational friction. This is a timely market: BNPL proliferation, API-first payments, and advances in AI underwriting make truly integrated orchestration feasible, and independent analysis scores the market 95/100 with revenue potential 94/100. SMB demand for conversion and average order value lifts, combined with easier integrations, means merchant adoption cycles can be shortened if the product reduces both friction and risk. To stand out, focus on pragmatic differentiation—target SMBs with turnkey integrations to the top 20 payment partners, transparent pricing at or below the $480 ACV benchmark, and measurable risk reduction metrics for lenders; embed compliance and data portability to ease international rollouts. Strengths are the large TAM and clear ROI for merchants and lenders, while challenges include building trust, navigating regulatory complexity, and the cost of acquiring a distributed SMB customer base against medium competition.

Market Opportunity

Lost sales & bad debt from fragmented plans — centralized installment management targets a $12.0B = 25M SMB merchants & lenders x $480 ACV (global addressable market for installment/payment orchestration software) total addressable market with medium saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 17% -- rising demand driven by BNPL and embedded finance expansion in e-commerce.

Key trends driving demand: BNPL proliferation -- more merchants want to offer flexible payments to boost conversion and AOV.; API-first payments -- easy integration enables faster merchant onboarding and richer data flows.; AI-driven underwriting -- machine learning enables instant, granular credit decisions and personalized schedules.; Open banking & data portability -- better income/transaction signals reduce default estimates and reconciliation effort..

Key competitors include Partial.ly, Splitit, Klarna (merchant services), Stripe (Installments / partner solutions), Workarounds: spreadsheets / QuickBooks / custom-built systems.

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Lost sales & bad debt from fragmented plans — centralized installment management

Executive Summary

Market Validation

Market Opportunity

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