Increasing compliance coverage by 385% and creating consistency across operations in 2 countries with PerformLine

About the Client

This prominent buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider offers accessible credit solutions, particularly for individuals with less-than-perfect credit. They provide point-of-sale financing, enabling customers to purchase items and spread the cost over manageable installments. The company operates not only in the UK but also in the United States, where they offer similar loan options. 

Business Challenges

This BNPL lender offers point-of-sale loans through a network of 500 merchants across the U.K., which has grown to over 850 since partnering with PerformLine. With this expanding number of merchants, ensuring regulatory compliance is more critical than ever. 

Over the last few years, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has intensified its focus on BNPL oversight, specifically for  the customer journey. This includes thoroughly examining financial promotion pages to ensure full transparency and adherence to guidelines.

Previously, the lender's oversight of its merchants' websites and social media profiles was limited, relying on manual efforts that only allowed for sporadic spot-checking. The compliance team could monitor only a few web pages at a time and review social media posts tagged directly to the company, leading to significant risks of missed compliance issues.

With the growth in their merchant network, the lender needed a more robust solution that could continuously monitor their merchants' online presence. The U.S. branch of the company already collaborates with PerformLine, but the need for a comprehensive, automated solution to track potential compliance issues in the U.K. amidst increasing regulatory scrutiny from the FCA became increasingly urgent.

PerformLine Solutions

• Discovery to find previously unknown web pages where their brand was being promoted using our proprietary crawler
• Web Monitoring to automate and scale the review of their merchant pages for regulatory compliance, including required disclosures as they relate to their brand and product offering
• Social Media Monitoring to automate and scale the monitoring merchant social media profiles and posts to ensure accurate product promotion
• Industry Rulebooks that are built on years of experience with U.K. regulators and clients in the BNPL space that are ready-to-use yet customizable to the client’s specific needs

The Results

Comprehensive oversight, increased compliance coverage, and time savings

With PerformLine, this client now has complete oversight of their 850+ merchant partners' activities across the web and social media, with daily monitoring and alerts for any potential compliance issues. 

Through automation and technology, this client has been able to increase its oversight of merchant partners by 385%, saving over 800 hours monthly on manual review. 

Merchant compliance across different regulatory landscapes with custom rulebooks

While the U.S. branch had already implemented PerformLine, regulatory requirements differ slightly between countries and regulatory bodies. Using PerformLine’s ready-to-use but customizable rulebooks, they have been able to adjust monitoring protocols as needed to comply with FCA regulations for BNPL, ensuring accurate oversight of their products. 

This system streamlines the compliance process,  saving time and reducing the risk of human error, ultimately making compliance management more efficient and reliable.

International compliance coverage across the U.K. and U.S. 

While the U.K. and U.S. branches operate independently, this client’s brand has achieved complete compliance coverage with PerformLine, significantly enhancing its overall operational efficiency by creating consistency across two different countries. 

By aligning its compliance strategies across the U.K. and U.S., the brand has created a robust framework that supports sustainable expansion and long-term success in both markets.