New York, NY - LaterPay – the industry’s first on-platform SaaS payment infrastructure designed to increase user conversion rates by offering immediate, frictionless access to paid content or services – has announced its expansion into the U.S. marketplace with an office opening in New York City. The company was founded in 2010 by CEO Cosmin Ene and is headquartered in Munich, Germany.
LaterPay is the industry’s first solution for “on-platform” monetization. The easily integrated SaaS infrastructure empowers content providers to stay in full control, monetizing their own traffic as well as traffic from referral sites directly on their platform.
LaterPay enables content or service providers of all types – from traditional and video publishers to software providers and entertainment platforms – to easily and economically sell digital assets and services without forcing the user to register or pay upfront. Instead, consumers are only prompted to pay for content or a service after they hit the purchase threshold set for them. Through this frictionless pay-later model, consumers are more inclined to convert their one-off purchases into long-term subscriptions, giving providers a unique approach to simultaneously promoting content consumption while also driving revenue on their own platform.
Leading the charge in the U.S., LaterPay has recruited industry expert Hal Bailey as its chief revenue officer. In his last position, Bailey served as director of emerging business development at Google for 12 years. Prior to joining LaterPay, Bailey invested in and advised multiple tech industry startups including Gradifi and Peer Street.
“In order to expand their digital revenues, providers today increasingly need to adapt to users’ dynamic consumption behavior – ranging from occasional to frequent use – by offering consumers multiple models that complement subscriptions. LaterPay offers an elegant solution for brands to engage consumers on their own platform while also marketing other paid models in the future,” said Ene. “We are very excited to roll out the LaterPay platform in the U.S. and to have Hal leading our efforts in the market.”
LaterPay raised fresh capital to support its international expansion. The company recently added 5 million euros to its capital pool making the total capital raised to date 20 million euros.
Since its launch in Germany, LaterPay’s infrastructure has been deployed by 150 clients. More specifically, the company has seen impactful results with German publishing giant SPIEGEL ONLINE. Using LaterPay, SPIEGEL ONLINE has formulated a way of introducing the concept of paid content to its readers without interrupting site visitors’ day-to-day content experience. Three million articles were purchased via LaterPay within the first year of going live. Crucially, the model was validated by the speed of users’ purchasing decisions – with 78 percent of users buying an article in less than 10 seconds. User willingness to register once the payment threshold was met and complete their purchase was also high.
“At SPIEGEL we recognize the need to innovate in the way we provide content to our readers based on their changing digital habits,” says Matthias Streitz, editorial chief of product at SPIEGEL. “Thanks to LaterPay, we have successfully navigated the hurdles of moving to a paid content model in order to establish a new bond of reciprocity with our vast user base.”
About LaterPay
LaterPay turns users into paying customers for digital content or services such as journalism, videos, and software. LaterPay owns patented technology for enabling payments and micropayments without upfront registration and payment, facilitating the “use now, pay later” approach. This allows users to consume paid content and services on the internet with one or two clicks — without prior registration or having to pay in advance. It is only when the shopping cart limit is reached that users are prompted to register and pay via one of many popular payment methods. By decoupling purchases from payments, LaterPay lowers the entry thresholds for users to consume digital goods and services. With LaterPay, companies can tap into new customer groups, get users acquainted with paid content, and gradually but successfully market higher-value paid models such as time passes and subscriptions. In this manner, LaterPay builds a bridge between free, ad-financed offerings and subscription models by providing a paygate. LaterPay aims to empower content providers to monetize the vast space that lives between ads and subscriptions.
