BNPL Platform Infrastructure

Introduction

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has transformed consumer credit, but building a scalable BNPL platform is an immense engineering challenge. It requires a financial backend capable of handling millions of micro-transactions, managing complex installment schedules, and reconciling merchant settlements in real-time.

NAYA provides the high-performance ledger infrastructure needed to launch and scale a BNPL offering without building the accounting engine from scratch.

The Operational Challenge

Running a BNPL service involves orchestrating three distinct financial flows simultaneously:

1. Consumer Credit: Assessing limits, scheduling installments, and tracking repayments.
2. Merchant Settlement: Paying merchants upfront (minus fees) while collecting from users over time.
3. Funding & Capital: Managing the debt facility or capital pool used to fund the advances.

Doing this with a standard relational database or a legacy core banking system often leads to:

• Ledger Drift: User balances don't match the sum of their installments.
• Settlement Errors: Merchants are overpaid or underpaid due to incorrect fee calculations.
• Reconciliation Nightmares: Matching thousands of $25 repayments to specific loans becomes impossible at scale.

The NAYA Solution

NAYA solves these challenges by providing a purpose-built Operational Ledger that natively understands the lifecycle of a BNPL loan.

1. Automated Installment Tracking

Instead of writing cron jobs to track due dates, NAYA allows you to define an amortization schedule at the moment of purchase.

• Immutable Schedules: Create a "Pay in 4" plan where every future installment is pre-booked as a pending ledger entry.
• Real-Time Status: Instantly update the status of an installment (Pending → Paid, or Pending → Overdue) based on payment processor webhooks.
• Fee Logic: Automatically accrue late fees if a payment misses its window, defined by your compliance policy.

2. Merchant Settlement Engine

BNPL revenue comes from the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR). NAYA ensures you capture this revenue accurately.

• Net Settlement: Automatically calculate the payout amount (Order Value - MDR) for each merchant.
• Batch Payouts: Aggregate daily sales into a single payout instruction to save on transfer fees, while maintaining a granular ledger of every transaction included in the batch.
• Refund Management: When a user returns an item, NAYA automatically reverses the ledger entries, updating both the user's loan balance and the merchant's owed settlements.

3. Real-Time Credit Limits

Managing risk requires strict enforcement of credit limits. NAYA acts as the authoritative source of truth for user "Open to Buy" balances.

• Programmatic Limits: Set credit limits based on user tiers or risk scores.
• Instant Authorization: Check the user's available balance against the purchase amount in < 100ms during checkout.
• Dynamic Adjustments: Automatically increase or decrease limits based on repayment behavior recorded in the ledger.

Integration Architecture

NAYA sits between your Checkout UI and your Payment Processor/Bank.

1. Checkout: User selects "Pay Later". Your backend queries NAYA for credit availability.
2. Authorization: NAYA reserves the funds and creates the loan container.
3. Capture: Upon shipment, NAYA books the loan, creates the 4 installment receivables, and credits the merchant's payable account.
4. Repayment: When the user pays an installment via Stripe/ACH, NAYA reconciles the incoming cash against the specific installment receivable.

Implementation Example

Here is how you might model a BNPL purchase event using the NAYA Ledger API.

{
  "type": "bnpl_purchase",
  "metadata": {
    "order_id": "ord_8823",
    "merchant_id": "mer_991"
  },
  "entries": [
    {
      "account_id": "user_loan_receivable",
      "direction": "debit",
      "amount": 10000,
      "layer": "consumer"
    },
    {
      "account_id": "merchant_payable",
      "direction": "credit",
      "amount": 9400,
      "layer": "settlement"
    },
    {
      "account_id": "revenue_mdr",
      "direction": "credit",
      "amount": 600,
      "layer": "income"
    }
  ],
  "schedule": {
    "frequency": "bi-weekly",
    "installments": 4
  }
}

This single API call creates the loan, schedules the 4 installments, calculates the merchant payout, and recognizes your revenue. No complex SQL transactions required.

Compliance & Reporting

BNPL is increasingly regulated. NAYA's Data Hub ensures you are audit-ready.

• TILA Compliance: Generate accurate Truth in Lending disclosures based on the precise amortization schedule.
• Loan Tape Generation: Export a standard loan tape for your debt facility providers with one click.
• Bad Debt Tracking: Automatically categorize overdue loans and manage charge-offs without polluting your operational metrics.

By using NAYA, you focus on the merchant network and user experience, while we handle the complex accounting logic that powers the business.