7 of the best online shopping apps and browser extensions explained
Photography by Natasha Killeen
Words by Maggie Zhou
The future is fintech.
Fashion has evolved drastically from simple off-the-rack purchases from department stores. We’ve now got access to a whole new realm of fashion at the tip of our fingers, in our pockets and with us at all times. Big players like Instagram and Depop may already be stored on your phone, but what about the lesser-known fashion apps out there?
While we can lean into dangerous debt and overconsumption territory with ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes, there are definite perks to signing up to certain apps if you know what you’re getting into.
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Here are seven of the best fintech fashion apps we’ve currently got our eye on.
Honey
Honey is the Robin Hood of the discount world, if you will. This free browser extension searches the web for available discount coupons and codes and rings them up in your checkout. If anyone else has painstakingly Google searched for promo codes, you know the pain of trying one after the other without luck. Honey’s smart technology does the hard work for you.
Why I love it: There’s a fun feature that shows you when a live code has last been used on Honey or when traffic is particularly high for a store.
Shoptagr
You know when you say, “I’ll buy this when it goes on sale” and then you inevitably forget about it for the rest of eternity? Yeah, well, Shoptagr fixes that. When you find an item you’re interested in, you can save it with the Shoptagr button that monitors its price. It also keeps an eye out for any active promo codes that may be available. There are currently 9,000 stores registered with the platform including Farfetch, Sephora and Airbnb.
Why I love it: Keep tabs on what purchases you’re eyeing by adding them to nifty collated wish lists that you then can share with friends and family (wink wink, nudge nudge).
Klarna
Put Pinterest, Honey and Afterpay in a blender and out pops Klarna, a three-in-one shopping companion. For 15 years, Swedish fintech company Klarna has been on a mission to make payments swifter and easier. It offers a personalised shopping experience, providing you with exclusive deals, notifying you of price drops, offering tailored wish lists and the ability to pay in interest-free instalments, if you so wish. Over 90 million active users are on it, so the platform has got to be doing something right.
Why I love it: Klarna wholeheartedly supports Australian talent. It helped create a music video featuring the Inspired Unemployed and last year, the platform gave away $75,000 to its users to exclusively local fashion.
Afterpay
This Aussie start-up was born in Sydney a tiny five years ago. Now, Afterpay has grown into a globally-loved platform that has become one of Australia’s greatest business success stories. Most of its income comes from merchants, meaning it prioritises its consumers’ experience. Available for both online and in-store purchases, users can easily split payments into four.
Why I love it: Afterpay is completely free for customers who pay on time. Late payment fees sit at fixed and capped rates, so they don’t snowball over time.
Unidays
There are some pretty sweet perks that come with uni – namely the occasional free snag and the hope that you’ll one day be employed after spending tens of thousands of dollars on a piece of paper. Another perk of higher education is Unidays! Instead of a flimsy card you might get from a student union, Unidays is an app that can be used at thousands of locations spanning across fashion, beauty, technology, travel, food and fitness industries.
Why I love it: It’s fast, free and simple to use. Unidays knows most students are time-poor and money-poor and takes care of the hassle for us.
Shopback
What if you pocketed free cash when you shopped? Sounds like something out of a dream, but it’s the reality that Shopback has created. As well as providing coupons and discount codes, Shopback also gives its users cash back on each purchase made through the app – essentially, a percentage of each transaction will end up back in your bank account. Since the app’s launch in 2014, over 20 million people have taken advantage already.
Why I love it: Occasionally Shopback will run ‘upsized cashback offers’ which boost the percentage of cash that ends up back in your pocket.
PayPal
PayPal is a well-loved veteran of the online shopping world. With encrypted financial information, a (very) convenient check out system and Buyer Protection, PayPal accompanies you throughout the entire transactional process. And between friends, you can send each other money and split bills with just a phone number or email address, no pesky BSBs in sight. Plus, they now own Honey, meaning promo codes are part of their biz too.
Why I love it: Refunded returns! Paypal can refund your shipping costs when you return a purchase.
For more on the current state and future of fashion fintech, you might like this article from WWD.
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