Should my online store offer Afterpay? What buy now pay later does to your fees and cash flow

Offering Afterpay or another buy now pay later (BNPL) option is worth it if it wins you sales you’d otherwise lose, and not worth it if it just moves card customers onto a dearer payment method. You get paid up front, but a fixed fee plus a percentage is netted off each payout, and refunds are taken back later.

That’s the decision in one line. The rest of this guide is about the part most owners skip: what the money actually does in your bank feed, week by week, going into the busiest trading stretch of the year.

What does buy now pay later cost an online store?

Afterpay’s own merchant page says you pay “a fixed fee, plus a percentage amount” on each approved purchase, and that the amounts can differ for online and in-store sales. It doesn’t publish a price list. Your figures live in your merchant agreement, and they depend on your industry and volumes.

Two things follow from that structure:

• The fixed part bites small orders hardest. A flat amount on a low-value basket takes a bigger slice of the sale than the same amount on a big one. If your average order is small, run the numbers on your cheapest products first.
• The percentage part scales with your best weeks. The busier you are, the more you pay in dollars, which is fine if the sales are truly extra and painful if they aren’t.

Don’t compare a BNPL fee against the “cost of a card sale” in the abstract. Compare it against your own statements: pull last quarter’s payment provider fees, divide by sales, and ask your BNPL provider for the equivalent. Then you’re comparing like with like.

How does the payout show up in your bank account?

This is where cash flow gets interesting, because BNPL doesn’t behave like a card payout.

For online orders, Afterpay says it pays you the purchase amount, keeps its fee and sends the rest to your nominated account, typically within five business days. Your agreement sets your settlement period (one to five business days is the range Afterpay describes in its help centre), and your bank may add more time.

What you’ll see on a bank statement:

Step	What happens
Customer checks out	Order is approved by the BNPL provider; you ship as normal
Settlement day	One lump sum lands, already net of the fee (and GST on the fee)
Refund or return	The amount is debited at a later settlement, less the fee
Heavy refund period	Refunds can outweigh sales, so a payout may not arrive at all

Notice what’s missing: you don’t wait for the customer’s instalments. The risk of the customer not paying sits with the provider, which is the real selling point for merchants. The catch is the timing of the netting. Your income line shows a smaller number than the sale price, and your refund line arrives separately, so your accounting software needs to treat the fee as an expense rather than letting it vanish inside a smaller deposit.

Practical step: set up a separate account line or feed rule for BNPL payouts in your accounting software. If the fee is buried in a net deposit, your reported sales will understate real turnover and your margin report will look better than it is.

Has the card surcharge ban changed the maths?

Yes, indirectly. From 1 October 2026 the RBA’s conclusions mean surcharging on debit and credit cards ends, alongside lower domestic interchange caps. The RBA also says eftpos, Mastercard, Visa and large acquirers must publish the fees they charge, with some transparency changes from 1 April 2027.

Three consequences for an online store:

1. Card costs now sit in your prices. There’s no checkout line to recover them, so every payment method is judged on what it does to margin.
2. BNPL is outside that decision. The conclusions paper deals with the card networks. It doesn’t set a rule for buy now pay later, so whether you can add anything extra for BNPL depends on your merchant agreement with the provider. Read the clause before you assume either way.
3. Cheaper cards make the BNPL premium more visible. If card costs fall over time as the lower interchange caps flow through your payment provider, the gap between a card sale and a BNPL sale may widen. Ask your provider what has changed on your statements.

The cleaner approach for most stores is to treat the fee as a cost of sale, price for it, and review it each quarter.

Is BNPL regulated now, and does that affect merchants?

Since 10 June 2025, BNPL providers have needed to meet credit licensing rules, under changes ASIC has issued guidance on. Those obligations fall on the providers, not on you as a retailer.

The practical effect for a merchant is on the customer side. More rigorous approval checks can mean some shoppers are declined at checkout. That’s worth knowing if you’re forecasting uplift from a BNPL button: the headline numbers a provider quotes about spend and order value come from its own studies, so test the effect on your own store rather than relying on them.

How do you test whether it’s worth it?

Run a simple four-week test before peak season rather than a gut-feel switch-on:

1. Record a baseline. Conversion rate, average order value and the share of orders paid by card for the four weeks before you start.
2. Switch BNPL on and leave pricing, ads and offers as they are, so you’re measuring one change.
3. Compare. Did average order value rise? Did total orders rise, or did card orders simply move across?
4. Do the margin sum. Take the extra gross profit, subtract the BNPL fees on all BNPL orders (not just the extra ones), and see whether anything is left.

If most BNPL orders would have been card orders, you’ve bought nothing. If conversion on higher-priced items rose, you may have found a lever worth keeping.

A worked example

Take a made-up homewares store. In a normal week, about one in six orders comes through BNPL. In Black Friday week, say it’s closer to one in four, and the store ships a large share of its annual stock out in seven days. The BNPL money arrives in the following week as lump sums, but the supplier invoices for the restock are due on 30-day terms, which also fall at the end of December.

In January, returns come back. Some are BNPL refunds, debited at later settlements. At the same time, the next quarter’s BAS is approaching. The store isn’t in trouble: it’s profitable and growing. It just has money going out faster than it comes in for about three weeks.

That’s the typical shape of BNPL cash flow in peak season: more sales, fees netted, refunds delayed, stock paid for before the sales cash is settled.

What does a lender see when it reads your BNPL payouts?

When you apply for finance, a lender reads your bank statements to work out how reliable your income is and how much you can comfortably repay. Linking your account through a read-only bank statement link means the lender sees your payouts, refunds and fees as they actually hit your account.

What helps:

• Steady, regular payouts from BNPL, card processing and any marketplace channel, rather than one-off spikes.
• Refunds in proportion to sales, with an explanation for any peak.
• Clear patterns around peak season, so a January dip reads as seasonal, not as trouble.

What lenders check online walks through the full list. If your store has several payment channels, a tidy statement history is worth as much as a good month.

When does finance make sense for a BNPL-heavy store?

BNPL speeds up your sales but not your supplier invoices, so it creates a predictable gap. Short-term funding fits when:

• you’re buying peak-season stock and the BNPL payouts land after the supplier is due;
• refunds and fee deductions in January collide with a BAS or payroll date;
• you’re scaling ad spend and the orders it produces settle over the following week.

A business line of credit can smooth that timing, and ecommerce business loans cover bigger stock buys. For the seasonal planning side, see peak season stock funding, and keep an eye on the warning signs in your online store’s cash flow as the weeks speed up.

If you’re mapping out Black Friday and wondering how the numbers work with your supplier terms, it takes about a minute to check your options online, and a person will look at your actual trading rather than a template.

Ready to plan your peak season cash flow?

Running a store means you’ll see more sales than cash for a few weeks every year, and that’s normal. The trick is lining the money up before the orders arrive.

If you’d like to see what funding could look like around your payouts, stock orders and January refunds, see if you qualify. It takes about 60 seconds, and there’s no credit check when you enquire, so asking won’t touch your credit file. We don’t send your details out to a pile of lenders. One team looks at your situation, and a real person calls you to talk it through.

One request: fill the form in accurately, including your real sales and how long you’ve been trading. The better the picture, the faster we can match you to the right option first time.

See if you qualify →