New key roles at Goldman signal BNPL ambitions

The news: Goldman Sachs seeks to fill two newly created roles within its Marcus direct bank to help to grow its buy now, pay later (BNPL) arm, per Insider. The US-based banking giant is looking to staff up MarcusPay, a point-of-sale loan division, by bringing on a VP of product management to oversee developing new features, and an associate for the arm’s product and partnership strategy team. 

Goldman plans to grow its BNPL business both through partnerships and through direct to consumer (DTC) offerings. 

More on this: MarcusPay, which already plays in BNPL with a JetBlue partnership, is looking to expand within a space that already includes several prominent players in the US.

• Fintechs: BNPL fintechs include Affirm, which is forecast to hit 6 million US users this year, per Insider Intelligence; Afterpay, which is slated to reach 12.7 million users; and Klarna, which is expected to hit 21.9 million users. We project significant growth by this trio of fintechs in the US by 2025; we expect them to hit respective user bases of 8.5 million, 19.6 million, and 32.7 million.
• Banks: Barclays announced in April that it’s teaming up with fintech Amount to roll out a white-label BNPL offering that merchants can provide to customers under their own brands. JPMorgan Chase jumped into BNPL last November with My Chase Plan, which the bank made available to its cardmembers. Banks can use two existing resources for BNPL offerings, per Insider: their credit card arms and financing from their balance sheets.

The opportunity: By scaling BNPL under MarcusPay, Goldman can grow a customer base that may become primed to use other Marcus products, including its high-yield savings account and its planned checking account—which it will offer in partnership with fintech Marqeta later this year. Conversely, Goldman can give its Marcus depository users a reason to stick around by marketing its BNPL offering, as MarcusPay can act as a differentiator beyond the bank’s competitive interest rates on savings.