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PayNearMe, a b2b fintech enabling consumers to pay their bills in cash at some large retail chains, nabbed a partnership last week with 47-state strong Dollar General.
The partnership allows PayNearMe clients – billers, such as auto lenders – to enable their customers to pay their bill at the register at Dollar General’s 19,000 stores nationwide. Customers simply present a scannable barcode on their smartphone to a cashier, pay in cash and receive a receipt verifying the transaction is complete.
PayNearMe then processes the payment and passes it on to its client.
“Our goal, or vision, is a world where it’s just easy to make payments. Cash is an important element in that because there’s a significant portion of the population that either has to or simply prefers to pay things like their bills in cash,” explained Michael Kaplan, chief revenue officer at PayNearMe.
“The cash retail network enables that segment of the population to easily make a payment with cash and then we make it easy for them. And then [we make it easy] for our clients to manage that payment, which would otherwise be a much more complicated thing,” Kaplan said.
More than half of U.S. adults and 69% of Gen Zers use cash more today than they did a year ago, a Harris Poll survey found in March. And while it’s not all that surprising that cash use was down last year – the nation was still amidst a national public health emergency last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic – it shows that, for some, cash is still king.
PayNearMe has partnerships with a number of major retailers, including Walmart, 7-Eleven, and Midwestern convenience chain Casey’s. The Dollar General deal increases its store count by one-third, up to more than 60,000 locations.
Approximately three-quarters of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Dollar General. What’s more, three-quarters of Dollar General locations are in towns of 20,000 or less. People in rural towns are more likely to be unbanked – a key community PayNearMe is tapping into with its services, as 54% of unbanked individuals prefer cash payments.
“Our clients’ cash-preferred customers who reside in these areas can now fund accounts and pay their bills with cash at the same location where they purchase a variety of items, including groceries, household items, clothing and tools—a convenient, one-stop-shop,” Kaplan said.
Fourteen years ago, PayNearMe got its first retail partner in 7-Eleven, which Kaplan said remains one of its highest-volume partners. Since its launch, PayNearMe has grown to processing other payment types as well, including credit cards, ACH, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Cash App Pay, PayPal, and Venmo.
Cash payments represent around 20% of payments processed by PayNearMe, Kaplan said. While that might not sound like much, that’s 20% of the more than $12 billion moved through PayNearMe’s network annually.
“We don’t sell a deal that doesn’t leverage the cash network,” Kaplan said.
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