How to Choose the Right BNPL Provider: 6 Criteria for Successful Selection

According to current Onlinemarktplatz.de 2025 forecasts, German market volume could reach approximately $69.5 billion in 2025. Merchants who don’t offer this option risk cart abandonment. Yet what proves decisive isn’t simply integrating BNPL – it’s selecting the right partner. A partner increasing conversion, protecting margins, and fostering customer loyalty. Six criteria provide guidance.

 

1. Integration & Technology in BNPL – Seamless, Fast, and Compatible

Checkout must ensure or optimize two elements: stability during load peaks and availability of desired payment methods. Both directly influence conversion rates, determining whether carts complete successfully. During peak season especially, when orders arrive in split seconds, this represents a critical success factor.

According to HDE Online-Monitor 2025 on German e-commerce, consumers frequently abandon orders when preferred payment methods aren’t offered. Additionally, on days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, even millisecond delays can trigger cart abandonment. Merchants not optimally positioned here lose valuable revenue while risking customer satisfaction deterioration. 

For merchants, this specifically means: BNPL solutions should integrate frictionlessly into common shop systems and PSPs, offer flexible expansion via APIs and webhooks, and run reliably even during high transaction volumes. Clear technical documentation simplifying implementation and maintenance while conserving internal resources proves equally important.

Riverty fulfills these requirements by enabling BNPL options through leading PSPs while maintaining checkout in merchant brand design. Shopping experience remains consistent while customers simultaneously receive desired flexibility – a measurable advantage for conversion and brand perception.

2. Risk & Fraud Management in BNPL – Protection Mechanisms Securing Margins

For merchants, one thing matters most: who bears risk when invoices go unpaid, and how effectively does a BNPL provider protect against fraud cases? Outstanding receivables, chargebacks, or fake orders directly impact margins. Professional BNPL providers assume responsibility here, ensuring clear, reliable processes.

Essential Criteria:

• Transparent risk assumption rules clarifying whether default risk lies with BNPL provider or merchant
• Modern fraud prevention through automated scoring and monitoring systems immediately recognizing suspicious patterns
• Efficient dispute processes handling chargebacks, customer inquiries, and disputes quickly and transparently

Merchants working with strong risk systems can significantly reduce cart abandonment. Publicis Sapient describes in 2025’s “The Next Wave of BNPL” that integrated risk management not only reduces payment defaults but improves conversion. Riverty employs automated verification and flexible evidence processes – resulting in merchants securing margins while customers experience frictionless checkout.

3. BNPL Costs & Fees – Transparency Builds Trust

Many merchants experience it during high season: rising cart values combined with increased return volumes. Such moments reveal how important clear cost structures prove. Only when all items remain transparent can margins be realistically planned. Current BusinessWire analysis forecasts 2025 European market volume exceeding $191 billion – yet this effect evaporates when fees lack transparency.

Returns belong to e-commerce daily routine – varying by payment method. For invoice purchases, Germany’s common BNPL equivalent, return rates in fashion segments significantly exceed advance payment (approximately 55.65% vs. 30.15%), according to current return rate analysis. For merchants, working with BNPL providers ensuring transparent, fair return-case processes can represent clear advantages. BNPL providers charging additional fees here burden partner margins significantly.

Merchants require BNPL providers increasing revenue while simultaneously assuming risks. Fair fee models transparently consider returns, chargebacks, or gateway costs – without nasty surprises in fine print.

Riverty stands for clarity here: fees remain comprehensible, cost structures fair. This provides merchants security to deploy BNPL not as a risk but as a genuine growth factor.

 

4. Merchant Support & Service – Reliable Assistance During Peak Times

During high season, mere minutes’ delay can determine whether problems are resolved timely or revenue disappears. Beyond stable technology and frictionlessly integrated solutions, support quality also plays important roles.

Critical Criteria for Merchants:

• Dedicated contacts instead of impersonal hotlines
• Rapid response times even when inquiry volumes rise
• Proactive communication before seasonal peaks

Market experience shows missing or slow support responses can directly affect revenue and customer satisfaction. BNPL providers with clearly structured account teams create noticeable advantages by not only solving problems faster but actively preventing them.

Riverty emphasizes individual support here: account management teams accompany merchants from setup through ongoing optimization to peak season support. This creates greater security, reduces internal effort, and enables more stable operations during high-revenue phases.

5. Customer Experience – Positive Experiences After Checkout

Purchase completion marks only the beginning. What determines outcomes: how customers subsequently handle invoices, installments, or returns – here shows whether single purchases become long-term customer loyalty. Industry analyses demonstrate: regular customers not only purchase more frequently but spend more per order – as current ECIO 2025 analysis emphasizes. For merchants, this means: BNPL partners shape brand perception far beyond checkout.

Imagine a customer ordering three products during Black Friday, returning two items – expecting automatic invoice adjustment. BNPL providers with streamlined processes ensure this occurs without inquiries, customers immediately receiving transparent billing. Positive post-purchase experiences like these can significantly increase repurchase rates.

Riverty precisely targets this. With the Riverty app rated 4.7 stars in stores, customers maintain constant control over payments, due dates, and returns. For merchants, this pays double: satisfied customers repurchase more frequently – and support costs decrease through fewer inquiries.

6. Scalability & Innovation with BNPL – Growing with Requirements

When campaigns go viral in seconds or merchants expand into new markets overnight, whether BNPL providers truly scale becomes evident. Scalability isn’t a buzzword but a foundation enabling international demand fulfillment.

Key Scalability Features:

• International scalability: Leading PSP connections enable seamless payment processing across European markets and currencies
• Flexible integration: APIs and webhooks enable targeted activation of modules like installment purchases or return processes – without deep checkout modifications
• Omnichannel capability: Riverty brings BNPL not only to online shops but also point of sale
• Operational innovation: Automated returns immediately adjust invoices, real-time dashboards provide merchants conversion and cash flow transparency, AI-supported verification relieves risk management

Practical Scalability Examples:

• Merchants expanding into two additional European markets activated Riverty through existing PSP interfaces – without additional integration effort
• Return processes automatically flowing into invoices significantly reduce manual customer service effort while accelerating refunds
• Real-time dashboards provide clarity on conversion and payment flows – advantageous when marketing actions trigger thousands of orders short-term

Riverty makes these functions standard. For merchants this means: fewer special projects, lower service costs, and greater expansion and peak business flexibility.

 

Market Development & Forecasts – BNPL in Transitio

German online retail should reach approximately €92 billion in volume in 2025, as current figures show. Demand for flexible payment methods like BNPL develops particularly dynamically.

European-level market growth proves noticeable: according to Cross Border Magazine 2025, over one-quarter of online shoppers now regularly use BNPL – trend rising. Dutch financial supervisor AFM indicates in its Market Update BNPL 2025 ongoing strong growth presenting new requirements for merchants across Europe. Globally, Juniper Research analysts calculate 2025 market volume exceeding $560 billion.

Simultaneously, regulatory developments gain prominence. With the new EU credit directive (CCD2) requiring full implementation by end-2026, creditworthiness check, age verification, and transparency obligation requirements intensify. Oliver Wyman emphasizes in 2025 that BNPL providers must fundamentally adjust processes for compliance. Consultancy.eu also stresses that merchants should early partner with BNPL providers proactively considering these requirements. Riverty operates precisely within this framework: with data-driven processes connecting compliance and customer experience.

 

The Right BNPL Partner for Sustainable Growth

Choosing the right BNPL provider determines more than just checkout. Strong partners increase conversion, protect margins, strengthen customer loyalty, and open growth opportunities beyond peak season. With Riverty, merchants gain providers thinking merchant-first, simplifying processes, and driving innovation.

Seeking BNPL partners positioning merchants first? Speak with our experts now.