The content of this article is provided for informational purposes only. You should always obtain independent business, tax, financial, and legal advice before making any business decision.
If you sell big-ticket items such as sofas, laptops, kitchens or travel packages, you've probably got data on customers adding an item to their baskets, then exiting before checking out.
It's rarely the overall price that stops them, it's partly the prospect of paying it all in one go, right now. When you don't offer a way to spread that cost, there's a good chance that customer finds a competitor who does, and you never find out why the sale was lost.
You might already suspect this. But you may also be holding back for reasons that have nothing to do with the customer. You might:
This guide works through each of those points in turn. It also looks at why hesitation grows with basket size, how PayPal’s "buy now pay later” solutions might work for you in practice, and what the new regulation means for you as a merchant offering your customers a flexible payment option.
The bigger the price tag, the bigger the hesitation. That holds true whether you sell furniture, electronics, fashion or travel: the opportunity to convert a hesitant browser into a buyer grows in step with your average order value. You have more to gain per sale, simply because there's more at stake for the customer deciding whether to click ‘buy’.
We offer a range of Buy Now Pay Later solutions, including Pay in 3 and Pay in 30 Days, designed to help your customers complete purchases they might otherwise abandon. We've seen the scale of that hesitation first-hand: in our own research, 39% of UK Pay in 3 users say they've abandoned a purchase because Pay in 3 wasn't available at checkout.2 The higher your average order value, the more each of those abandoned baskets costs you, which is exactly why flexible payments matter most for the kind of high-ticket sales you're making.
It's becoming a competitive necessity, too. If your competitors already offer flexible payments and you don't, you risk losing the sale and them winning it, often without ever knowing why the customer left.
And because approval matters as much as availability, our reach across UK consumers works in your favour: PayPal's broad transaction history supports approval decisions for more of your customers, so fewer declines get in the way of a sale you've already won.
From your side, Pay Later8 isn't a new integration or extra admin: it's already part of PayPal Checkout, included at your standard transaction fee with nothing extra to set up once you’re live with PayPal.
You're paid in full at the point of transaction, and we handle the billing and collections from there, including if a customer misses an instalment, which doesn't affect your payout. You're also covered by Seller Protection on eligible Pay in 3 purchases.
What you can add is Pay Later messaging, the on-site banners that make the option visible to shoppers, covered later in this guide.
The part that tends to give merchants pause is liability: if a customer misses a payment, does that become your problem? With Pay Later, it doesn't. We carry out the credit check, we own the collections, and none of that touches your payout, whether a customer pays on time or not.
We've seen this play out with real merchants. BT Shop saw a 321% higher average order value on Pay Later transactions compared with standard PayPal transactions, clear evi-dence that flexible payments expand what customers are willing to buy, rather than just changing how they pay for what they were buying anyway. You can find similar results in our case studies with Urban Rider and Deia Studios.
Pay in 3 and Pay in 30 Days are two complementary products that together cover your full high-ticket range, both delivered through the same PayPal button with nothing separate to integrate.
Because both surface automatically through the PayPal button based on cart value, you don't need to configure anything. The right option shows up for the right basket size, every time.
Pay in 3: This covers purchases from £20 to £3,000. It offers eligible customers 0% APR with three monthly payments and no late fees. You get paid upfront – for your customers, the first of three payments goes through at checkout, and the next two payments occur on the same date the following two months.
Pay in 30 Days: This is designed for purchases up to £900, the kind of mid-to-large basket that's common for accessories, smaller furniture pieces, or top-up orders on a bigger purchase. Again, you get paid upfront in full, your customers get 30 days to pay in full with no interest and no fees, which gives them room to try, return or simply wait for payday, without you losing the sale.
The impact of flexible payments varies by vertical, but the underlying pattern holds everywhere: the longer your customer takes to decide and the larger the basket, the more a flexible payment option can help you close the sale.
Furniture and home goods: These items have a high average order value and high consideration, and basket abandonment is common once the total approaches four figures. It's one of the clearest examples of where Pay Later makes a difference for you.
Consumer electronics: These are research-heavy buying decisions, and the customer has often committed mentally before checkout. That makes product-page messaging especially effective here: showing a flexible payment option to a shopper who has already abandoned their cart is one of the more effective ways to bring them back to finish the purchase.
Travel accessories: These purchases tend to be high-intent and time-sensitive. Flexible payments remove the last piece of friction, whether your customers are booking premium luggage, travel tech or accessories ahead of a trip, and it applies just as much to hotel and travel bookings, where customers are often planning ahead and want to spread the cost of a larger spend without derailing their budget. Offering BNPL at checkout can be the difference between an abandoned cart and a confirmed booking.
Premium fashion and footwear: Here, PayPal's appeal often comes down to reach. If you sell across a broad range of demographics rather than one age group or gender, that reach is a stronger value proposition than any single competitor's narrower BNPL option.
You can build confidence with your shoppers, reduce cart abandonment and drive more sales if you combine your BNPL offering with BNPL reminder messaging through the customer journey.
For example, with PayPal’s Pay Later Messaging, you can set dynamic Pay Later banners to appear in key points in the customer journey - from your landing page through to checkout - to let your shoppers know early on they can spread the cost of their purchase.
Our UK data shows that adding Pay Later messaging or a Pay Later button, is associated with increases in Pay Later sales of up to 35%.2 In a separate sample, we saw Pay Later payment volume rise by 49% and transactions by 38.8% after messaging was introduced earlier in the customer journey, driven by both first-time usage (+47.7%) and repeat use (+19.6%): evidence that visibility helps you win new customers to Pay Later and keep bringing existing ones back to it.4
Regulation adds transparency to flexible payments, and trust matters more as your purchase size increases. If you're already working with a compliant provider, you're ahead of the curve. Here's specifically what changed, and why it doesn't fall on you.
From 15 July 2026, the FCA brought Deferred Payment Credit (DPC), its term for BNPL, into its regulatory perimeter.5 Lenders, including PayPal, now need FCA authorisation and must meet new rules on affordability checks, clear disclosures, and support for customers in financial difficulty. That obligation sits with us as the lender, not with you: merchants offering DPC (aka BNPL) as a payment option remain exempt from the new rules.6
In practice, that means the compliance burden, including affordability checks, credit decisioning and consumer communications, stays with PayPal, so you get the benefit of a fully regulated product without taking on any of the administrative load yourself.
Sign up for a PayPal Business account to access Pay in 3 and Pay in 30 Days. If you already have one, activate Pay Later messaging and start promoting it across your site.
When you sell high-ticket items, giving your customers the option to spread the cost or delay payment removes a major barrier to purchase. They get the flexibility they're looking for, and you get paid in full upfront.
With Pay in 3 and Pay in 30 Days covering a wide range of price points, you can meet customer expectations without adding complexity to your operations – it's already built into PayPal Checkout.
You also get the peace of mind of working with a regulated provider. We handle the compliance, credit decisioning and customer communications, so you're free to focus on your core business.
Adding flexible payments to your checkout can help you capture more sales, reduce cart abandonment, and build confidence with your shoppers. UK data shows Pay in 3 orders run 129% higher in average value than standard PayPal transactions, and 97% of Pay Later users return to use it again.7
To get started, set up a PayPal Business account and activate Pay Later messaging across your site.