Sales soar at Klarna rival Laybuy as buy-now-pay-later sector hots up

New Zealand-based buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platform Laybuy has seen a 162 per cent increase in the total amount spent through its platform over the past year. 

Laybuy's customers have spent over NZ$508m (~£238m) through its platform and the BNPL fintech has also seen a 48 per cent increase in the number of active merchants using its financing options since the end of September last year. 

The buy-now-pay-later fintech now has over 568,000 active customers, which jumped by 100,000 in the last quarter alone, an increase that managing director Gary Rohloff puts down to its repayment structure: “Our research tells us that consumers prefer weekly payments because that is how they budget, providing the company with a distinctive value proposition.”  

Unlike its rivals, Laybuy offers customers the chance to make repayments on a weekly basis, compared to the monthly or bi-monthly structure used by the likes of Klarna and ClearPay.

Laybuy’s quarterly business update, its first since listing on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) last month, also showed strong growth in the UK. 

The fintech launched in the UK just over a year and a half ago and, in the past 12 months alone, has seen its active UK merchants jump by 354 per cent to 527 and the number of active UK customers leapt by 916 per cent to 269,000. 

On the strong performance in the UK market, Rohloff said: “The United Kingdom provides an enormous opportunity for Laybuy. Its retail market is more than two times larger than the Australasian market and it is a market where BNPL is still in its infancy, despite a comparatively high proportion of retail hopping being done online.” 

“The capital raised through our IPO in September is being used to significantly increase our presence in the United Kingdom and drive an aggressive marketing strategy to grow our customer base and merchant partnerships.” 

Last week Laybuy revealed that it had been named the official buy-now-pay-later partner to Premier League football club Manchester United. 

The deal would see Laybuy’s financing options being offered in Manchester United’s flagship store in Old Trafford.  

At the end of September, the fintech also expanded its coverage to include major e-commerce platforms, which included the likes of Shopify, Wix and BigCommerce.