2021-9-9

Deferred Payments for Mercari US: Mercari Members Share Their Thoughts on the Business Tie-up Between Mercari US and Zip #MercariDays

#Mercari Days

On the morning of September 1, 2021, Mercari Group company Mercari US concluded a partnership with Zip Co., Ltd. to launch a deferred payment service (a “Buy Now, Pay Later” or “BNPL” service)!

This will finally bring deferred payment to the US service, with deferred payment having been available on Mercari JP’s service for several years now.

The feature is super easy to use, as well. Users only need to select “Zip” as their payment method when purchasing an item. This will not only give US users more options when purchasing items on Mercari, but Zip’s state-of-the-art deferred payment service (allowing for payments in up to four installments) does not impact users’ credit scores.

For this Mercan article, we took this opportunity to get some comments from members involved in the project.

I was in charge of Android app implementation. Part of the feature was developed by Zip, so my job was to integrate Mercari US’s features with the feature provided by Zip. They were extremely cooperative in dealing with the time difference and other constraints, helping us drive the project across the finish line. And now, this feature will allow users to easily break large payments down into installments. I’m looking forward to seeing how users in the US use the installment payment feature compared to users in Japan, given the differences between the Japanese and US markets.

I was in charge of the web implementation. We had to come up with ways to ensure a smooth development process with members based in the US (engineers, PM, designer), eventually scheduling all communication during the morning, Japan time, with the afternoon focusing on actual development and implementation. I’m so glad that we were able to come together to make this release a reality. This project really taught me the importance of pre-planning and documentation as we had changes made to the specs mid-development and regressions that bypassed QA. I hope that I can use what I learned on the project to ensure safer releases and create a more efficient development process for my team.

Mercari US continues to surprise us with new projects like “Mercari Local,” which was just announced recently.
We’ll be watching closely to see how this BNPL feature changes the Mercari experience for our US users.

And on that note, we’re currently looking for new members to join Mercari US! Check the link below for more information about applying!

See you next time for more #MercariDays!

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Deferred Payments for Mercari US: Mercari Members Share Their Thoughts on the Business Tie-up Between Mercari US and Zip #MercariDays