A is for Apple and APIs in the ABCs of BNPL

 Digital technology and integrations between banks, fintech, and retailers are not just changing the how but when of payments. As a result, the way consumers pay for their purchases includes an increasingly popular option called buy now, pay later (BNPL).

Taking out a loan for a purchase as small as $35, which is basically what BNPL is, would never have been considered in the past. It would have been far too cumbersome for both consumers and lenders. But thanks to the prevalence of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the financial industry, the process is now as easy and seamless as a credit or debit card transaction.

Nearly every major retail store and site now offers customers the option to pay with a BNPL. The players in that space already include the Swedish fintech Klarna, as well as the US-based Sezzle and Affirm. The name behind many store credit cards, Synchrony, also has its offering, and now even bank-branded credit cards like Citi and Chase, as well as Amex, give their customers the option to use BNPL.

The space is heating up even more with Apple’s announcement that it would offer its own BNPL called Apple Pay Later through a subsidiary of the company that has obtained lending licenses.

Use of BNPL has exploded, accounting for $100 billion in retail purchases in 2021, up from $24 billion in 2020, as reported in Fintech Times. The forecast for the market indicates that the trend is here to stay. The global market for BNPL is expected to hit $3.98 trillion by 2030 with a CAGR of over 45%, starting from 2021, according to Allied Market Research.

Read more in The Way We Buy Now: The ABCs of BNPL The title is a nod to Anthony Trollope and my immersion in Victorian lit back in the day.

Where HubSpot messed up

                                                       Photo by Kai Bossom on Unsplash

As I mentioned in What Edison can teach us about SEO, the first rule of writing is following through on what you promise in the title. If you fail to do that, you're guilty of bait-and-switch, or what is commonly known as clickbait.

                                                      Photo by Justus Menke on Unsplash

The promise the reader is not just about the topic covered but the approach and extent promised in the title. Consequently, if the title promises to explain a concept in 300 words, how long should it be? Just 300 word, not 500, and certainly not over 1800 words. Yet that's just what HubSpot did with its article entitled What Is an API? The Answer in 300 Words or Less.

That's Application Programming Interface (API) which connects many functions across many forms of business.

In truth it's a very thorough article that's been updated more than once to grown more comprehensives since it was first published in 2013. However, the promise of the title is not "Everything you need to know about an API" but a super-short overview that can be read in under a minute. For the current length, the article is described as a seven minute read.

What HubSpot should have done in this case is retain whatever short form the article may originally have held and then offered a link to the longer form with a CTA introduced along the lines of, "That's APIs in a nutshell. If you want to understand more about how they work for marketing, take a deep dive into the subject here."

Merely saying, "Here's a brief definition of an API, followed by some key information on how to make one work for your business" as a transition to the extensively detailed explanation that appears under the same title doesn't cut it as following through on the expected KISS (keep it short and simple) content.

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