Buy Now, Pay Later Industry Is About to Meet Its First Big Test

For three days each week during the month of April in 2014, a seasoned product manager named Lulu Young, an engineering manager named Paul Connolly, and a 24-year-old jewelry salesman named Nick Molnar gathered in a bare, windowless conference room in Melbourne to hash out the features and functionality of a financial product that existed only in Molnar’s head. The goal was to appeal to two constituencies at once: online retailers, who were always eager to convert more virtual browsers into actual shoppers; and consumers, some of whom didn’t have credit cards but, Molnar thought, might still like a way ...