Afterpay and LayAway Travel have collaborated to create a new travel service, PLAY – a simple platform that helps Aussie travellers’ pick, book and pay for their holiday over a series of interest-free instalments prior to their departure date. 
The service, which adopts a traditional layby model, is expected to open the door for many Australians who want to have amazing travel experiences, but also want to be in control of their personal finances and avoid coming back from a trip with a debt lag.
PLAY allows customers to pick and book a holiday package and pay for it in full in weekly or fortnightly instalments over a 3- to12-month period before they travel.
David Hancock, Group Head of Afterpay, said It’s no secret Australians love to travel, taking over 11 million outbound international trips per year – cementing our place as one of the highest travelled nations on earth per capita.
“Taking the Australian passion and hunger for travel into account, what we’ve endeavoured to do with PLAY is to create high quality, well thought-out packages to provide experiences they may never have had before, but also manage payment in a way that is responsible.”
Mr Hancock said PLAY is a direct response to customer feedback, with Afterpay’s existing customer base using instalments as an effective budgeting tool and have been asking to be able to pay for travel experiences in the same way.
“PLAY is different to Afterpay as customers pay in full before they travel. However, the same Afterpay values that people know and trust still apply, like responsible spending, no interest, and regular, equal repayments.
“It’s great to see that throughout the current pilot program with PLAY, the customers involved have given the same amazing feedback we get regularly from our Afterpay customers,” Mr Hancock said.
Andrew Paykel, Managing Director of LayAway said, “Every week PLAY curates a number of unique, high quality and high value travel deals to cater for different travel tastes and budgets across relaxation, wellness, adventure, culture and party categories.
“PLAY then combines these once-in-a-lifetime experiences with the ability to pay for them in advance, in weekly or fortnightly interest-free instalments, and over the time period that best suits you.”
PLAY makes all travel, accommodation and other related bookings and payments on the customer’s behalf.
PLAY is available at www.pickpayplay.com
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