Channel Mastery - Ep. 73: Paul Paradis, Chief Revenue Officer at Sezzle

“The research that I've read points to the fact that the more payment methods you offer, the better for checkout conversion.”
- Paul Paradis

EPISODE PREVIEW:

According to my guest today, Paul Paradis, the 20-35-year-old age group will have the most purchasing power in the U.S. by 2020. So yep, the Millennial generation’s purchasing journey remains crucial. But are you ready for this? In that same age group, only one in three have a credit card.This is where Sezzle, for which Paul is chief revenue officer, comes in. Sezzle is taking aim at the traditional banking system and credit cards by offering interest-free, installment payments. This disruption is something that we need to keep our eyes on as specialty brands and retailers. In under two years, Sezzle already has 250,000+ users 3,500 e-commerce merchant accounts. Eighty percent of those customers are in that 20-35-year-old age bracket.In this episode, Paul and I discuss Sezzle as a new payment option for specialty brands intended to ease the friction of “buy now” and minimize levels of cart abandonment. Sezzle is purportedly a tool that could close the digital divide that we, as specialty businesses, are facing with today’s Amazon-trained consumer.

GUEST PROFILES:

Paul Paradis

Paul Paradis is the chief revenue officer at Sezzle, a company whose mission is to financially empower the next generation. Sezzle is a payment platform that enables consumers to pay for their purchases using interest-free installment plans.

SELECT QUOTES:

“I think there is also a severe lack of access to credit for young people. They don't have that pipeline to get access to a card like they used to. Credit standards tightened from the banks. So what you're seeing is that this young group is really delaying all of their financial decisions later in life.”“We decided to build a really consumer-friendly payment method that acts as kind of the credit training wheels.”“Eighty-seven percent of our users say they wouldn't have made the purchase without Sezzle as an option. Seventy-nine percent said they spent more as a result of having Sezzle as an option. We see that, we have about 20 percent larger basket sizes with Sezzle orders relative to our merchant's average order size. And I think 85 percent said that this would be their preferred payment method if it were accepted everywhere.”“The research that I've read points to the fact that the more payment methods you offer, the better for checkout conversion.”