Compliance Checklist

The Buy Now, Pay Later Compliance Checklist

For Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) lenders, compliance requirements across your marketing programs can be tricky to navigate. Regulations governing industry lending are complex, broad, and oftentimes ambiguous—designed to protect consumers by covering a wide range of potentially deceptive or abusive acts and practices.

So, how can you ensure that your brand and merchant partners are compliant? We’ve compiled a checklist of the top items that Buy Now, Pay Later lenders should remember when crafting their compliance programs.

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Investigation disputes: Lenders must investigate disputes that consumers initiate, pause payment requirements during the investigation, and issue credits if necessary

Refunding returned products or canceled services: When consumers return products or cancel services for a refund, lenders must credit the refunds to consumers’ accounts

Providing billing statements: Consumers must receive periodic billing statements like those for classic credit card accounts

Advertising and Promotions

As part of your compliance program, you want to monitor your company’s marketing activities across all mediums. This includes your own marketing communications (across the web, calls, emails, messages, documents, social media, etc), third party pages, external blogs, and review sites for any instances of brand infringement or noncompliance with regulatory requirements.

Below are some items to consider to ensure compliant marketing materials and communications.

Complaint Identification: Have a system in place to quickly identify consumer complaints submitted directly to your organization, across social media platforms, and to regulators (like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)

Accessible Support for Consumers: Establish a clear and accessible procedure for handling consumer complaints. Provide multiple contact methods (e.g., phone, email, online form) and ensure these are prominently displayed in appropriate marketing materials

Timely Acknowledgements: Handle complaints promptly and provide written acknowledgments to consumers in a timely manner

Business History: Financial health, operational capabilities, and reputation in the industry

Customer Feedback: Customer reviews and ratings to gauge merchant’s service quality

Regulatory Compliance: Ensure the merchant has processes in place to comply with relevant laws and regulations, including consumer protection and data privacy laws

Enforcement Actions: Check if the merchant was involved in any previous enforcement actions or lawsuits

Website: Ensure the merchant’s website is legitimate

Social Media Presence: Make sure the merchant is posting appropriate content and advertising what they sell (i.e. not selling any items prohibited by your brand)

Merchant websites and promotions

Email marketing campaigns

Social media platforms (Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, etc.)

Paid search advertising (Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc.)

Display advertising (banner ads, pop-ups, etc.)

Direct mail campaigns

Messaging channels (SMS, messages, chat boxes, push notifications, etc)

Affiliate marketing programs

Referral marketing program

Automatic discovery and ongoing monitoring across marketing channels, merchants, and third parties

Ready-to-use and expert-built rulebooks designed to identify potential compliance violations to monitor content against

A centralized workflow that tracks activities across both internal departments and external partners, merchants, or third parties

Detailed reporting and analytics for compliance and performance

Archived history from discovery through remediation for any audit situation

Opportunity for scale that makes it easy to add additional marketing channels for review and monitoring

Kick-start your Buy Now, Pay Later compliance program with experience.

With deep industry experience, PerformLine equips BNPL companies with a comprehensive compliance platform to navigate a complex industry and consumer protection regulations. Through machine learning, predictive analytics, and years of experience with regulators and clients in highly regulated industries, our platform is the backbone of many leading Buy Now, Pay Later compliance programs.

Your business moves fast. Make sure your compliance program moves in sync with it using PerformLine's comprehensive, flexible, and scalable technology.

The Buy Now, Pay Later Compliance Checklist

Industry-Specific Regulations

Advertising and Promotions

Clear and Transparent Terms

Accurate and Substantiated Claims

Mandatory Disclosures

Consumer Complaint Management

Complaint Management

Merchant Monitoring

Due Diligence

Ongoing Monitoring

Monitoring + Auditing

Enforcement + Remediation

Technology

Kick-start your Buy Now, Pay Later compliance program with experience.

Get complete compliance coverage with PerformLine