The American Buy Now, Pay Later Affirm platform announced its withdrawal from the Australian financial services market.
Source: Pixabay.com
The company made this decision almost a month after reducing part of its workforce. In early February, the firm laid off 19% of its employees.
A message published on the company’s official website says that on February 28, it was decided to begin the process of gradually winding down business in the Australian financial services market. The firm is currently sending out emails to active loan holders containing notifications about the completion of activities in Australia.
Affirm was founded in 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin. Currently, the company’s services are used by thousands of sellers. The firm provides installment payment plans to millions of users in the US, Canada, and, until recently, Australia.
The company went through the BNPL wave before the IPO in 2021. Since then, the firm has made deals with blue-chip players, including Amazon and Target.
In February, the company’s management laid off 500 employees. At the same time, it became known that the company refuses to implement plans related to the activation of activities in the field of cryptocurrencies. It is not yet known whether this refusal is the final solution, or a temporary halt to the implementation of the plan until better times.
Max Levchin said that as a result of negative trends in the industry and unfavorable processes in the global economy in mid-2022, it became clear that it was not possible to realize all the company’s intentions. He noted that over the past few years, the company has had active development dynamics, this trend was particularly intense during the coronavirus pandemic. The firm hired employees ahead of the income needed to maintain the number of staff.
Australia previously had the unspoken status of a country providing favorable conditions for the introduction and development of BNPL, but over time the situation has changed.
As we have reported earlier, Western Union and Beforepay Launch ‘Send Now Pay Later’ in Australia.
Serhii Mikhailov
Serhii’s track record of study and work spans six years at the Faculty of Philology and eight years in the media, during which he has developed a deep understanding of various aspects of the industry and honed his writing skills; his areas of expertise include fintech, payments, cryptocurrency, and financial services, and he is constantly keeping a close eye on the latest developments and innovations in these fields, as he believes that they will have a significant impact on the future direction of the economy as a whole.
