Klarna, Afterpay earnings show continued robustness in BNPL market
Klarna and Afterpay, two of the fastest-growing buy-now-pay-later platforms, recently announced their quarterly results and as per expectations, they show increased activity and transaction volumes in this segment with strong pipelines for the coming quarter as well.
This shows that that the BNPL is well and truly alive and kicking and as the investors, who poured in a lot of funds into this segment, correctly estimated, this segment is set to explode shortly. Also, this segment is unlikely to be restricted to the online space alone but is likely to be available in the offline space as well.
Nick Molnar, co-CEO, said that “from a geographic perspective, Australia is Square’s biggest international region outside the U.S., whereas, for Afterpay, the U.S. is our largest regional opportunity outside of Australia.”
Afterpay reported that revenues have risen by 78% and active customers by 63% with its main markets being in Australia and the US with both regions complementing each other. The company also reported that it’s omnichannel, both online and offline usage, usage increased by over 160% which shows that users are ready to avail the instalment shopping option even for offline purchases as well. The increase in demand for BNPL services has mainly come from the new Generation Z users who prefer to make large purchases through instalments spread over 3 or 4 months.
Klarna has also reported strong numbers as well with transaction volumes in the US rising by 334% and it now has over 90 million active users. Both the companies have also said that they have a strong pipeline for the upcoming holiday period during which the transaction volumes are expected to shoot higher. But both the companies do not seem to have major profits at this point but this is more to do with their massive spending for growth, marketing and acquisitions rather than due to lower revenues.
The revenues continue to be strong and it is pretty clear that this segment is loved by the users around the world which ensures that the winners in this segment, after all the competition within this segment is settled, are going to reap the rewards in the future. This is the reason why we are seeing even the major companies like Afterpay, Paypal and Klarna falling over one another to capture a slice of the pie.
