Insights Magazine from CMSPI
Page 26 | November 2021
SQUARE BUYS AFTERPAY, MARKING LARGEST AUSTRALIAN ACQUISITION IN HISTORY
• Goldman Sachs and Apple have formed a partnership to issue Apple Pay Later. • Sweden’s Klarna is considering options for a public offering in the United Kingdom after its most recent venture funding round raised $45.6 billion. • The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has launched StepPay. • PayPal has announced plans to purchase Japanese BNPL firm Paidy for $2.7 billion. That would enable Square’s small-business clients to extend BNPL offerings directly at the point-of-sale and enable consumers direct access to BNPL at some of Afterpay’s global merchant partnerships. The deal is expected to close by the end of March 2022 but is subject to approval from both Square and Afterpay shareholders as well as Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. With the large-scale consolidation, BNPL may prove to become one of the most permanent and valuable payment products. Now competing with other global BNPL players such as Klarna and Affirm, Square plans to integrate Afterpay’s product offerings into both its merchant- oriented Seller and consumer-oriented CashApp systems.
Square Inc. this summer announced plans to acquire global buy now, pay later pioneer Afterpay, offering $29 billion for the Melbourne- based company to set a record as the largest acquisition in Australian history (AU$39 billion). Founded in 2014, Afterpay is one of the world’s premier BNPL firms, serving over 100,000 merchants and 16 million consumers globally. In recent months, BNPL has come to be one of the hottest segments of the payment industry with a wide variety of new engagements, consolidation and products being developed to meet the high demand for the alternative credit solution • In North America, Visa has entered BNPL with the limited merchant roll-out of Visa Installments, primarily in Canada. • Mastercard has begun the roll-out of consumer and small business-oriented BNPL products under the name Mastercard Installments.
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