Lease-to-own fintech Acima has launched a virtual Mastercard payment card to allow underbanked consumers to lease eligible products and eliminate risk for merchants as Acima purchases the goods for rental.
Consumers approved for the leasing option can instantly access the LeasePay card by adding it to their mobile wallet from the Acima app, allowing transactions online, in-app or at the point of sale through the digital wallet.
“We’re creating a new payments category for retailers and consumers," Jason Hogg, executive vice president of Acima, said in a Wednesday press release.
Plano, Texas-based Acima operates as a division of omnichannel lease-to-own company Rent-A-Center. When Acima purchases the products from retailers and leases them to Acima users, the Rent-A-Center obtains the products if the consumer chooses not to complete the payments for full ownership.
"This is the first lease-to-own payments card in the industry that provides retailers access to a significantly larger segment of consumers they couldn’t previously count as customers," Hogg added. "Consumers will have access to an easy-to-use payments vehicle they can rely on to enter lease-to-own transactions with Acima.”
It was important for Acima to work with Mastercard and its "wide merchant acceptance and leading technology solutions to ensure transactions are simple and accessible," Hogg noted.
Acima recently released a lease-to-own web browser extension, enabling consumers to shop and lease at a wider selection of national retailers. The Acima LeasePay card will be integrated into this feature to further improve consumer choice and transaction speed.
Acima will also work closely with Mastercard’s Innovation Lab, where product leaders from both companies will share technology and payments expertise to refine new tools to support underbanked and unbanked consumers.
“The power of the Mastercard network and our longstanding commitment to providing choice in how consumers want to pay will enable Acima to deliver a new level of shopping power and a more frictionless lease-to-own transaction experience across whichever shopping channel consumers desire,” Kush Saxena, executive vice president for U.S. merchants and acceptance at Mastercard, said in the release. “We look forward to working closely with Acima to help provide people with more flexibility and power in an inclusive economy.”
