Snap Finance, the US lease-to-own financing company, launched Snap Marketplace on 4 November 2026, an online store offering more than 100,000 products across home furnishings, appliances, technology and outdoor living, all available with Snap’s lease-to-own payments, according to the announcement. The release does not name the merchants on Snap Marketplace or say whether prices match those at the original retailers. Snap Finance says its merchant network remains central to the business. Rival Katapult takes the opposite route: Fintechbits checked its website on 4 November 2026, which says approved shoppers can use a Katapult lease with more than 200 online retailers rather than in a store Katapult runs itself.

What Snap Marketplace Changes

Snap has grown since 2012 by sitting at the checkout of partner retailers and offering lease-to-own to shoppers who might not qualify for credit. Snap Marketplace flips that: the shopper starts with Snap and picks the merchant afterwards. Chief executive Ted Saunders called it “the next step in Snap’s evolution”.

Lease-to-own differs from buy now, pay later. The customer leases the item and owns it only after completing payments or buying it out, and the total cost can be well above the retail price. Regulators have looked hard at short-term credit for weaker borrowers, as Fintechbits covered in its piece on UK BNPL regulation. A direct-to-consumer store gives Snap more data on shoppers, and more responsibility for how products are priced, described and delivered. If a lease customer is unhappy with an item bought on Snap Marketplace, the complaint now lands with Snap rather than with a partner retailer.

Snap says it has helped millions of consumers of all credit types since its founding in 2012. Snap Marketplace covers categories such as home furnishings, appliances, technology and outdoor living, which include large purchases that a household with thin credit may struggle to finance any other way. Running its own store also changes Snap’s economics and its exposure, because it controls the customer relationship instead of depending on a merchant to offer its financing at checkout.