Millions of Poles open the Żappka app every day to collect bonuses or find a promotion. Soon, there will be one more button there — a credit limit from Poland's largest bank. Żabka Group, PKO Bank Polski, Visa and Planet Pay announced a strategic partnership on Friday, April 17.

What exactly is being launched

Żappka Pay is a Visa credit card with a limit and payment deferral option, integrated directly into the Żappka app. The card works not only in Żabka stores, but at any point where Visa is accepted. According to Wojciech Krok, director of Żabka Future, the service combines lending with a loyalty program — in other words, for every purchase made on credit, the customer also accumulates bonuses.

"We want to be a leader among banks that know how to build partnerships in a true embedded banking model — banking services built directly into the context of customers' lives"

Tomasz Poć, PKO Bank Polski

Full launch for all network customers is planned for the second half of 2026 — after a testing phase. For now, the service will appear in the app within "a few weeks."

Why this is not just another credit card

PKO Bank Polski is deliberately building a network of ecosystems — financial services embedded in platforms with large daily audiences. In November 2025, the bank launched a similar scheme with Allegro: within 11 weeks, the Allegro Klik service attracted over 150,000 users. In parallel, the Automarket platform set a record in March 2026 — over a thousand cars sold per month.

Żabka is the logical next step: the network has over 10,000 stores in Poland and is one of the most used apps in the country's retail sector. According to money.pl, similar models already operate in Japan (7-Eleven + banking services), South Korea and France (Carrefour Banque) — meaning Żappka Pay fits into a global trend where the supermarket becomes a financial entry point.

Where the risk lies

The model has built-in asymmetry: a customer comes in for a loaf of bread and leaves with a credit limit obtained in three clicks. Żabka targets daily small purchases — the average transaction in the network is small, but visit frequency is high. This is classic BNPL (buy now, pay later) mechanics, which in Poland is still regulated more leniently than traditional consumer lending.

The partnership is structured as a four-way deal: PKO BP provides the loan and bears the risk, Planet Pay provides the technical payment infrastructure, Visa provides the acceptance network, and Żabka provides the audience and data on purchasing behavior. The latter is the most valuable: the bank gains access to detailed information about what, when and how often the customer buys.

The mechanism for assessing creditworthiness, limits and deferral terms have not been publicly disclosed — partners limited themselves to general statements about "simplicity" and "accessibility."

If PKO BP, by analogy with Allegro, attracts 150,000 Żappka Pay users in the first three months — the model of ecosystem lending will become the standard for the Polish market. The question is whether the regulator KNF will have time to understand it before the scale makes any intervention cosmetic.