Afterpay rival Splitit soars again on Q2 results – The Australian Financial Review

“Then, COVID pushed the demand for instalment-payment solutions and given the low-friction nature of our products … we’re seeing a much higher share of payments than before. This has all driven our growth.”
Unlike other buy now, pay later providers, Splitit utilises a person’s existing line of credit and allows them to make credit card payments for an item or service in instalments.
Like rival Payright, it also specialises in higher-value transactions, and its average transaction value is $US893.
Since mid-June, when the company announced a five-year partnership with Mastercard, the valuation of the business has soared more than 130 per cent.
At the same time, rivals like Afterpay, Zip and Sezzle have boomed, while other private buy now, pay later businesses have raised capital.
Splitit on Wednesday announced that the number of merchants signed up to its service had passed 1000, up 104 per cent on the previous corresponding period. Big new merchants signed included Sofa Club, Scorptec, Tatami Fightwear and Daily Sale.
The number of shoppers using Splitit also climbed substantially, up 85 per cent to 309,000.
Mr Paterson said the categories with the most growth were homewares, health and fitness and “self-esteem”.
“People are investing more in things like furniture, bedding and appliances and then in health and fitness with things like bicycles and outdoor sporting groups and then things like dentistry with Invisalign. And then even luxury retail is having a rebound too.
“We don’t provide guidance to the market because were still a young company … but I see no reason why our volumes would slow down.”
An Israeli-founded company, Splitit listed on the ASX in January 2019 at 20¢ a share. Mr Paterson was appointed chief executive in October.
Although the business is building up its team in Australia, having recently hired a chief financial officer who is based in Melbourne, its big focus regions are the US and the UK.
Mr Paterson said he was still keen to build up Splitit’s presence in Australia, but admitted that the company was late to the buy now, pay later space locally.
“[Australia is] harder in terms of execution because we’re late to the market and it’s well served, but no one does what we do, so we still see it as a top-four market to penetrate,” he said.
“[In the next few years] we’ll keep building out the foundations for the business and keep building our partnerships … And then longer term we’ll look at new products around debit, business-to-business and also expanding further internationally.”

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