What we got wrong (and right) building BNPL

5th December 2025

On the surface, a product launch looks seamless. The button appears, the feature works, and the press release goes out. But on the inside? That is usually a very different story.

We sat down with Julien, our Head of BNPL, to go backstage. We wanted the truth: the reality of the mistakes, the doubts, and the collaboration that made it happen.

Here is the story.

I was pretty sure that selling the product to our merchant base would be a struggle. I looked at the market, saw it was saturated with BNPL offers, and thought, "This is going to be tough."

I was dead wrong. The response was immediate: our merchants were positive and enthusiastic about taking on the product. It was a great reminder that when you offer real value, people notice. Of course, settling on a price is never easy, but we have an amazing Business Development team handling that. They turned a challenge into a huge win for us.

The biggest beast was delinquency calculations.

When you combine multiple repayment methods with the complexities of SEPA Direct Debit functionality, the use cases just pile up. It’s incredibly intricate.

In the end, it wasn’t one person who fixed it. The Data Engineering, Fraud, Finance, and Core Engineering teams came together to propose a process that worked for Day 1. It was a massive collaborative effort. It will obviously need to pass the reality test, but I was so happy with how we figured out a solution together.

(Note: The engineers at Satispay are fantastic. They likely solved way more difficult issues without me even knowing!)

A difficult topic was limit management. The way limits work on the standard Satispay wallet just has a different dynamic than what we needed for a credit product.

At the beginning, it looked like a blocker. It clearly wouldn't work. But instead of fighting over it, we found a compromise. We decided to largely leverage the existing wallet process but added a "BNPL twist." This workaround allowed us to enable those higher-ticket purchases while keeping the system secure. It wasn't the original plan, but it was the right solution.

I never doubted we would make it. But I definitely doubted if we could make our target date.

There was one specific day when three very complex blockers emerged all at once. None of them had an obvious solution. The piling-up effect made me wonder if we were stuck.

I went to the engineering team to ask what was realistic. I was braced for bad news, but instead, I was reassured that solutions were on the way and that I should trust the process. I did, and I don’t regret it. It was a humbling moment for me that showed the creativity, passion, and hard work our team put into this project so we could succeed.

The fact that there was no major issue.

In all the product launches I’ve done in my career, it is very rare to have "silence" during the early days. I assumed we’d be putting out fires. I was wrong, and very happy to be! It’s a testament to the preparation that went in backstage.

"Take time to explain in detail the dynamics of a credit product. Don’t take for granted that things seemingly obvious to you are obvious to the team."

Ready to write your own story? We’d love to have you!