New Zealand’s Laybuy doubled its shopper numbers this Christmas

Laybuy counts the growth after an “exceptional” quarter.

Over the past 12 months Laybuy has seen the number of shoppers using its service rise more than 117 per cent to over 687,000, the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) group announced today.

Laybuy’s pay later service was used to buy a record NZ$182m worth of goods during the quarter ending 31 December, a figure up 187 per cent year-on-year.

“Laybuy experienced a highly successful trading quarter with exceptional GMV growth across all existing regions,” said Laybuy’s managing director Gary Rohloff.

The lender’s share price leapt over 13 per cent after the results were announced, pushing Laybuy’s valuation to over NZ$250m.

“We delivered new records for the number of active customers and merchants, highest trading day, trading week and trading month driven by key initiatives (including the launch of ‘Tap to Pay’ for in-store purchases in partnership with Mastercard) and record Black Friday and holiday sales.”

Across Australia, New Zealand and the UK Laybuy now counts over 8,000 merchants, with the UK seeing particularly strong growth with both merchants and customers both up over 400 per cent.

Last year Laybuy published the first UK buy-now-pay-later Code of Practice which it’s calling on BNPL providers in the UK to sign up to.

Laybuy also revealed before Christmas that it had been named the official BNPL partner to Premier League football club Manchester United.

The deal has seen 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.