Ally Financial is accelerating its point-of-sale (POS) lending strategy with the help of a few strategic partnerships.
Ally Lending, the private lending arm of the $184.1 billion bank that offers installment loans and interest promotions, bolstered its offerings by entering the retail POS space in August through a partnership with Mastercard’s Vyze, according to the bank’s third-quarter earnings call last week. The Vyze platform offers high-ticket financing options to customers of thousands of retailers, such as The Home Depot and Microsoft.

Ally Lending, which generated $167 million of volume last quarter, is the first installment loan lender on Vyze and has integrated its fully digital application process into the platform for purchases up to $40,000, with monthly fixed-rate installment loans between six and 60 months.
“Our capabilities in health care, home improvement and retail position us well in the rapidly growing payment ecosystem,” said CEO Jeff Brown during the call.
The Detroit-based bank’s recent POS efforts accelerated after it acquired Health Credit Services (HCS) for $190 million last October. Charlotte-based HCS offered customers and health care providers financing for health care services not covered by insurance policies, and its platform is now wrapped into Ally Lending’s website.
Also read: Inside Look: The meteoric rise of point-of-sale lending in the U.S.
Point-of-sale financing has taken off with consumers and lenders alike in recent years as major financing players look to optimize online sales. CitiBank, for one, extended its installment loan Citi Flex Pay plan to Amazon in August, and Visa launched its own POS system in July to provide safe and efficient payment plans for customers.
“It’s essentially a digital payment of the future because it gives [consumers] complete transactional-level flexibility,” Dinesh Chopra, Ally’s chief strategy officer, previously told Bank Innovation.
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