Perpay is a buy-now, pay-later service that reports your payments to the credit bureaus, which can help you improve your credit score. It lets you split your qualified purchases into interest-free installments, which you make over several months via automatic direct deposit deductions.
If you want to build credit without a credit card, buy-now, pay-later services can be an attractive resource. This Perpay review will explain how their services work and help you decide whether Perpay is right for you.
Perpay Review & Ratings
Perpay is a buy-now, pay-later service that helps you build credit. It splits your purchases into interest-free installments, then reports your line of credit and payments to the major credit bureaus.
Perpay is an excellent idea in theory, but the execution seems to be lacking.
Pros
Reports to the three major credit bureaus
Cons
Inconsistent customer support
What is Perpay?
Traditionally, credit cards have been the only way for consumers to finance their ordinary spending. Installment loans are too unwieldy and lines of credit too expensive to use for day-to-day transactions.
However, credit cards aren’t without their issues. For example, credit checks and security deposits can make them inaccessible to some consumers. Also, their interest rates are high enough to cripple your finances if you carry a balance past their brief grace periods. Credit card debt can pile up fast and cause serious problems.
Buy-now, pay-later services like Perpay are a direct response to these problems. Perpay lets you pay off your purchases over multiple months without incurring any interest or fees, and there’s no credit check or security deposit to sign up.
Perpay’s mission is “to make everyday purchases more accessible and help you build credit along the way.” Their services seem to do a reasonable job of both since they also share your activities with all three major credit bureaus.
How Does Perpay Work?
Here’s everything you need to know about how Perpay’s services work, including how to sign up for them, how you need to handle purchases, and how much you can expect to see your credit score increase.
How to Sign Up for Perpay
Though there’s no credit check to sign up, Perpay has some surprisingly strict eligibility restrictions. In addition to being a United States resident 18 years of age or older, you must meet the following requirements to become a Perpay member:
- Actively maintain full-time employment (disability income accepted)
- Have three months of continuous employment history with your current employer
- Get paid via direct deposit
- Have an active mobile phone
- Have no active bankruptcies
- Be in good standing with all financial obligations
Assuming you meet these requirements, you can complete the registration process through their website. You’ll need to share your contact details, provide your income information, and verify your identity.
How To Use Perpay
Unfortunately, there’s no way to use Perpay’s credit line to make purchases through other online or brick-and-mortar stores. You have to shop through their online marketplace to take advantage of the service, and you’re limited to the brands they partner with, though there are many.
The other primary restriction is that you can only make purchases up to your spending limit. They’ll assign it using the net income estimate you provide when you first sign up for Perpay. Typically, it’ll be somewhere between $500 and $2,000.
Perpay may also factor your activities with them into your spending limit. Placing orders through the service and repaying them on time may help raise your purchasing power.
When you order through the Perpay shop, you’ll wait one or two business days for them to review your request. Upon approval, they’ll email you a link to set up your direct deposit deductions and repayment term, which can be up to 12 months.
Perpay will then update your minimum required payment, which goes toward all your outstanding order balances. You don’t need to make a separate payment for each order. Unfortunately, Perpay only lets you make the minimum payments via direct deposit, though you can submit extra ones via credit cards or bank transfers.
If you can’t split your paycheck deposit between multiple accounts, Perpay will do it for you. The direct deposits will align with your pay cycle and can be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
⚠️ You must make one full payment at or above the minimum via direct deposit before Perpay prepares your items for shipment.
How Does Perpay Handle Returns?
Unfortunately, there are significant restrictions on the products that Perpay will let you return after buying from their store. Non-returnable items include:
- Those from select brands like Gucci, Samsung, Lego, and many more
- Beauty or personal care products
- Jewelry that has been used or worn
- Furniture, mattresses, or freight items leaving the manufacturer’s warehouse
- Used electronic or musical items outside the original packaging (unless damaged or defective)
- Mouth-blown instruments, mouthpieces, harmonicas, and drumsticks
- Tires that you’ve mounted onto your vehicle
- Pet food and specific treats
You generally have 30 days after the delivery date to request a refund for all other products. There’s an exception for damage claims, which you must submit within 48 hours of delivery.
Unless your item is damaged, you’re responsible for the original shipping cost, a $10 return shipping fee, and a 5% restocking fee on all returns.
How Does Perpay Make Money?
Perpay doesn’t charge any membership or late fees, and your installments aren’t subject to interest. That may make you suspicious about how Perpay profits from your business, but the answer is straightforward.
They purchase the products in their store wholesale, mark up the prices, and resell them to you. As a result, it’s possible some of their products are unacceptably overpriced.
⚠️ Many customer reviews report encountering an overpricing issue. See the customer review section for more details.
If you sign up for Perpay, compare their prices to other retail options before buying items. Only you can determine whether their inflated costs are worth whatever credit-building benefit you’ll receive.
📗 Learn More: A better credit score is a way to save money, which makes paying for one feel frustrating and counterproductive. Consider using our techniques for free credit building instead: 9 Best Ways to Build Credit for Free.
How Much Will Perpay Build Your Credit?
Perpay doesn’t report your credit line or payment activities to the credit bureaus by default. If you want to see a benefit to your credit score, you need to activate Perpay+ from your dashboard or at checkout on your first order.
Then, Perpay will start reporting to Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion once you complete four months of on-time payments. The total payment amount must also exceed $200.
If you fail to make consistent, on-time payments, you may not qualify for Perpay+. The service provider will elect not to report your activities to protect your credit score.
If you manage to clear all those hurdles, you could see your credit score improve significantly. Perpay claims their users see an average increase of 39 points, though they don’t mention how long it takes them to see that benefit.
Of course, that’s just an average, and there’s no way to know for sure what your results will be. It can vary significantly depending on your current credit score, previous credit history, and how you use Perpay. The impact on your credit score will be greater if you have a relatively thin credit file.
Perpay Customer Reviews
Perpay has a well-established online presence and many customer reviews across multiple platforms. That makes it relatively easy to gain insight into the average customer experience.
Interestingly, customer reviews for Perpay seem to be balanced, with no significant inclination one way or the other. Here are Perpay’s ratings on each platform where they have a profile:
Many customers seem to encounter no issues using Perpay and praise the service’s convenience. They also mention the high quality of the items offered, the easy access to credit-building opportunities, and the helpful customer support teams.
However, just as many reviewers feel the opposite. They report having difficulty completing orders, requesting cancellations, shipping items, and getting customer service representatives on the phone.
One consistent point in both positive and negative reviews is that the items in Perpay’s stores are overpriced. Some users found this forgivable given the benefits, but others think the prices are unacceptable.
Ultimately, it’s hard to say what kind of experience you should expect when you sign up for Perpay. It could be smooth sailing, but there’s an equal chance you’ll have issues completing orders and struggle to get help.
Perpay Alternatives
Perpay’s purpose is to facilitate financial transactions while helping you build credit. Fortunately, there are many other tools with those same goals, which means you have plenty of alternative options if you decide Perpay isn’t worth using.
Here are a few options to consider:
- Sezzle Up: Another free buy-now, pay-later service, Sezzle Up receives better customer reviews than Perpay. They seem to charge lower prices and have better customer support. They also offer a virtual card that lets you use their services outside the Sezzle store, which Perpay doesn’t yet.
- Chime Credit Builder: Chime offers a credit card with no credit check, interest, or fees. Each month, you transfer as much or as little cash as you want into the account, which becomes your credit limit for the period. Chime then uses it to automatically pay off your balance at the end of the month.
Whether or not you decide to use Perpay, you’ll still benefit from using other credit-building tools. Your credit mix alone is worth 10% of your FICO score, so try to acquire a diverse set of revolving and installment debts.
Is Perpay Worth It?
Perpay is probably not worth using for most consumers. Their item prices seem to make the service more expensive than the value of the benefits you receive. There’s also a good chance you’ll encounter at least one of the issues other customers mention in their reviews.
Ultimately, too many other tools are available to people with bad credit that can help you cover your daily expenses and build credit without taking the same risks. Perpay is an excellent idea in theory, but the execution seems to be lacking.
Our Methodology
There is no universal best-fit credit-building tool for everyone. However, almost all clients are looking for pretty much the same thing: the biggest credit score boost with the least expense and hassle.
We compared Perpay to similar services reporting installment payments to the credit bureaus. All of the companies covered in this article scored exceptionally well.
Here’s what we used as a basis for our ratings:
Effectiveness
The primary feature here is the number of credit bureaus the company reports to. Perpay will place a revolving account on your credit record with all three credit bureaus. That does not guarantee that your credit score will rise, but nobody can guarantee that.
You will still need to keep your use of the service well below your credit limit to keep your credit utilization low, and you’ll still need to make your payments on time.
Ease of Use
Ease of use ratings are based primarily on customer reviews. Many Perpay customers reported easy setup and a smooth operating experience, but there were also numerous reports of problems and issues. Some of these may be due to customers not understanding the instructions or the system, but you should be aware of the issues.
Cost
Cost is an important feature of a credit-building tool. Any savings can go directly to paying off past debts. While it is not the only factor, cost became a key deciding factor.
We looked at the total cost of the service. Perpay gets high marks for its lack of interest and fees, but a relatively low score because of the large price markups on the goods that they sell.
Support
The support rating is also based primarily on customer reviews. Again, while there were reports of positive experiences, there were a significant number of reports indicating that customer service was inadequate or inaccessible.
