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Pace lets shoppers split their purchases into smaller payments over time, both online and in stores across Asia.
Pace is a buy-now-pay-later company. When you buy something at a partner store or website, Pace pays the merchant the full amount right away, and you pay Pace back in smaller installments, often spread over a few weeks or months. For shoppers, that turns a purchase that feels too big for one paycheck into something manageable. For merchants, it's a way to close more sales without fronting any of the credit risk themselves.
The company makes money by taking a cut from the merchant on each transaction, and it may also earn fees from customers for certain plans or late payments. That merchant fee is the heart of the model: a shop is essentially paying Pace for a higher chance that a browsing customer actually buys. Pace competes with other regional players and with credit cards and store financing, so its edge comes from signing up lots of merchants, approving shoppers quickly with its own risk scoring, and keeping fraud and defaults low. If too many borrowers fail to pay, the economics wobble fast, which is the constant tension in this business. Pace is headquartered in Singapore and built its network across Southeast Asia, with a strong presence in markets like Singapore and Malaysia, plus expansion into places such as Hong Kong and Japan. It serves both online checkout pages and physical stores, so a shopper can use Pace at a website or by scanning a code at the counter. Over time it has added features like a Pace card and app-based wallet tools to keep customers coming back and to deepen its relationship beyond a single purchase.
The broader story is one of ambition and risk. Buy-now-pay-later exploded in popularity across Asia as young shoppers embraced installment plans, and Pace positioned itself as one of the region's serious contenders. But the model is capital-hungry: Pace has to fund the loans it hands out, and it has raised money from investors to fuel growth, including backing from Victory Park Capital-linked funding arrangements that let it expand its lending capacity. The company also made headlines with a deal involving the failed crypto lender Genesis-related bankruptcy estate, which had lent money to Pace; Pace's debt there became part of the fallout. Keeping funding cheap and defaults low while signing more merchants is the whole game, and that is what will decide whether Pace becomes a lasting payments habit or another casualty of a crowded, thin-margin market.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026