The tattoo industry continues to be red hot. Americans alone spend over $1.6 billion on tattoos each year, and their growing zest for body art is shared all over Europe. However, hefty price tags placed on the best ink still deter many would-be clients and the potential revenue they can bring your shop. Thankfully, flexible payment solutions, such as the newly released Vagaro Pay Later, enable tattoo shops to capitalize on their industry’s growth and generate more bookings without putting the squeeze on clients’ wallets.
Vagaro Pay Later powered by Certegy is an example of the Buy-Now, Pay-Later payment model that has become increasingly popular in recent years. It gives clients the financial flexibility to afford the larger, more artistically elaborate pieces that they normally wouldn’t be able to in four interest-free installments. The VPL Split-Pay option adds yet another layer of convenience for buyers by letting them split their payment between their credit card and Vagaro Pay Later
In these ways, you’ll effectively enable more people to artfully express their authentic selves while earning more money in the process. We call that a win-win.
Below, we’ll break down the benefits of Buy Now, Pay Later, and explore how Vagaro’s latest feature can grow your studio.
How Does Vagaro Pay Later Work?
To answer this question, we should first define the Buy-Now, Pay-Later (BNPL) payment model.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)
BNPL divides a (typically large) purchase into a series of equal payments (typically four), the first of which is made at checkout. Buy Now, Pay Later is now offered by most major traditional and e-commerce retailers. Businesses are paid in full upfront and the BNPL provider carries the risk, not the seller. In 2022, BNPL payments grew at a rate of 66.5% in the U.S. alone. Tattoo studios on the Vagaro platform are poised to take advantage of this growth.
Vagaro Pay Later
Vagaro Pay Later seamlessly integrates into the rest of your Vagaro tattoo software & apps. It can be applied to anything you sell and works with both online and in-store purchases. When clients opt to use Vagaro Pay Later, they agree to make four interest-free payments over six weeks. This equates to one payment automatically charged every two weeks, or, around every pay day for most people.
For context, let's use the example of a forearm tattoo that takes five hours to complete and costs $800. When a qualifying client selects Vagaro Pay Later as their payment option, your shop receives all the funds right away. The client pays $200 at checkout, followed by three additional $200 payments. Simple math, right? All installments are automatically withdrawn from a client’s linked bank account.
Ways Vagaro Pay Later Can Benefit Your Tattoo Shop
The benefits of Vagaro Pay Later are obvious for clients, but what about the growth of your business?
Well...
It Helps You Sell Higher-Value Tattoos:
As we have already covered, using a BNPL service like Vagaro Pay Later enables clients to afford bigger, bolder tattoos by easing their financial burden. That means selling more sleeve, chest, back & full-shoulder tattoos, and more maximalist styles, such as:
- Portraiture
- Irezumi
- Realism
- Surrealism
Why this uptick in big sales? Having the agreed-upon amount deducted on payday enables clients to budget accordingly for purchases that otherwise do not fit into their immediate budget.
It Adds Flexible Payment Options
Vagaro Pay Later’s Credit Card Split-Pay feature stretches payment flexibility even further, enabling clients to split payment between their credit card and VPL at checkout if needed for an even easier, more manageable payment option. This is especially useful if a transaction exceeds the VPL maximum limit of $1,500.
Payment can also be split between VPL, cash, gift card or check.
It Increases Your Reach
Offering Vagaro Pay Later can bring in scores of new customers from different demographics. Buy Now, Pay Later is particularly popular among Millennial and Gen Z shoppers, especially since a hard credit check is not required. After easy budgeting, respondents to that same Ascent survey above cited the lack of credit checks & interest-free payments as the main reasons they use BNPL.
We should also mention that, statistically, Millennials and Gen Z comprise the age groups most likely to have tattoos.
It Improves Customer Experience & Retention
Vagaro Pay Later gives clients more choice and control over their payment options. As a BNPL service, it also offers a simple, straightforward and frictionless payment process. These are the ingredients for an elevated client experience, the kind that keeps them coming back.
Consumers are even more likely to make a purchase if flexible payment options are made part of a seamless point of sale experience.
It Improves Conversion Rates
Flexible BNPL options, like Vagaro Pay Later, can remove the specter of buyer’s remorse. This means fewer abandoned shopping carts and an increased likelihood that clients will follow through when booking services online. In fact, numbers point to up to a 30% conversion rate on average for businesses with BNPL platforms.
It Increases Average Order Values
Businesses can elevate average order values (AOV) by 30% to 50% when they use BNPL over other payment methods, according to CNBC. The lesson: When people know that they can rely on flexible payment options, like Vagaro Pay Later, they are likely to spend more on additional services and package upgrades. Pro tip: Be sure that you introduce the Vagaro Pay Later option as early in the sales conversation as possible.
How to Get Started with Vagaro Pay Later
Setting up Vagaro Pay Later is straightforward. The VPL approval process for Vagaro businesses takes four business days. When approved, existing Vagaro businesses will find the feature in the “Add-Ons” section of their software. They simply select activate, then set their min/max price limits. Now, they can accept VPL payments for everything you sell, including products, services & packages. They also have the flexibility of applying repayment plans to both online and in-house checkouts. New customers who sign up for Vagaro Merchant Services will be enrolled automatically into VPL.
Clients who choose the Pay Later option must also get approved to use it, though this process is fairly quick. To sign up, they simply find the VPL option in their Vagaro profile, accept the terms and conditions and input their bank account information.
Check out this helpful article for more in-depth information on how to set up Vagaro Pay Later.
Driven by the influence of celebrities, social media, high fashion and a general shift in societal attitudes toward body art, the popularity of tattoos has never been higher in its several thousand-year existence than it is today.
While it may be a bit younger, BNPL’s use has skyrocketed in the last several years, concurrent with the tattoo industry’s significant growth. Seamlessly integrated into the rest of the Vagaro tattoo scheduling software, Vagaro Pay Later will enable tattoo studios to sell more high-value services and increase overall sales conversions with no financial risk to them. Don’t leave so much potential revenue on the table. Start using Vagaro today!