equipifi, a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform built for banks and credit unions, has announced Risk-Based Pricing for BNPL, an enhancement to its existing decision engine. The update gives lending teams greater flexibility to tailor BNPL offers to each account holder’s real-time financial context, while curating offers that compete with the largest direct-to-consumer installment loan products for highly qualified borrowers.

Risk-based pricing is a standard practice in consumer lending, where lenders set rates, limits, and terms according to a borrower’s risk profile rather than applying one uniform structure to everyone. Bringing that model to BNPL means a bank or credit union can differentiate its installment offers across account holders in real time, instead of operating a single program-wide set of rules.

Since equipifi launched its decision engine in early 2023, eligible account holders have received BNPL offers based on their real-time account and cash flow positions. With the new capability, lenders can curate personalized, real-time limits, rates, and terms matched to an account holder’s history, ensuring offers are both competitive and risk-adjusted.

“Consumers are turning to BNPL more often and for more of their everyday spending, and what they need from it evolves with their banking relationship,” said Bryce Deeney, CEO and Founder of equipifi. “Consider an account holder who has banked with their institution for over ten years, keeps a high cash balance, and has a very large purchase they need to make. Now, the institution can automatically curate offers for this account holder that are competitive with top lenders in large-ticket installment loans.”

Deeney also pointed to another scenario: an account holder who can afford the same large purchase but shows slightly elevated risk signals in their account history. “Rather than turning them down, equipifi’s Risk-Based-Pricing gives banks and credit unions the tools to curate terms and rates that allow the institution to say yes, more often,” he said.

For institutions that make engagement part of their strategy, Risk-Based Pricing also opens the possibility of a protected environment in which newer account holders, or those with thinner financial histories at the institution, can use BNPL to build their file and grow their relationship over time.

“Banks and credit unions already have visibility into the tenure, balances, and cash flow that set account holders apart,” Deeney explained. “That’s a key strength over third-party BNPL providers, who have to piece together what an institution sees every day. Our platform has always enabled institutions to underwrite in real-time using that data, and as the infrastructure behind in-house BNPL programs, it keeps evolving so institutions can do more with the information they already have. Risk-Based Pricing takes that underwriting further inside the program our customers already trust. That’s where BNPL is headed, and our customers asked us to help them get there first.”

The capability builds on a decision engine that has been in market since early 2023, so institutions already running equipifi-powered BNPL programs be adding a pricing layer to an existing product rather than deploying a new one. In doing so, it extends the in-house pitch Deeney outlined: keeping installment lending decisions, and the relationship data behind them, inside the institution rather than ceding them to third-party providers.