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Roehl Niño Bautista · · 1 min readTwitter co-founder’s payment firm buys BNPL service Afterpay in $29b deal
“Square, the payments firm of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will purchase buy now, pay later (BNPL) pioneer Afterpay for US$29 billion, creating a global transactions giant in the biggest buyout of an Australian firm,” reported Reuters.
Details:
- The deal will open Square’s huge US customer base to Afterpay’s interest-free installment payments.
- Afterpay founders Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar will get roughly A$2.5 billion (US$1.8 billion) each, while China’s Tencent will receive A$1.7 billion (over US$1.2 billion) for its stake in the Melbourne-headquartered firm.
Dive deeper:
- According to a study, a BNPL boom has taken Singapore by storm, with around 19% of the city-state’s population having used such services. The report also found that about 30% of Singaporeans between the ages of 25 and 34 had “most likely” given the payments system a try.
- However, the lack of credit checks makes the system susceptible to fraud, according to critics quoted in the Reuters report.
Currency converted from US Dollars to Australian Dollars: US$1 – A$1.36
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Arpit Nayak
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