TikTok Shop Partners With Atome to Offer Installment Payments in Malaysia

TikTok Shop has partnered with buy now, pay later (BNPL) service Atome to offer installment payments in Malaysia.

“Today we announce our partnership with Atome, providing our customers easy payment options at checkout,” Jonathan Low, eCommerce lead of strategy and special projects at TikTok Shop, said in a Friday (July 21) post on LinkedIn. “Extremely excited to see this partnership happening, and grateful for the opportunities given to grow the business further!”

With this new integration, customers of the social media app’s eCommerce platform can split payments up over three or six months, CNBC reported Thursday (July 20).

Low said in the report that the partnership is expected to drive growth and enable merchants of all sizes to offer a payment option that is flexible and convenient.

The company behind Atome, Advance Intelligence Group, is a FinTech firm based in Singapore and backed by major investors like the SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus, according to the report.

William Yang, head of commercial at Atome, said, per the report, “By integrating Atome as a payment option on TikTok Shop, we’re excited to help drive ecommerce growth and support brands of all sizes.”

The partnership is part of TikTok Shop’s planned expansion into Southeast Asia as TikTok faces government scrutiny in the United States, its largest market, and has been banned in India, according to the report.

TikTok intends to pour billions of dollars into Southeast Asia over the next few years, the report said. As of April, the company said it had more than 325 million monthly users in the region. In June, TikTok announced it will offer $12.2 million in cash grants, training and advertising credits to help more than 120,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) sell online.

PYMNTS research has found that social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram have made it quicker and easier for consumers worldwide to share their shopping stories.

Forty-three percent of consumers browse social media to find goods and services, and 14% ultimately purchase those goods and services, according to “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media,” a PYMNTS and AWS collaboration.