Australia's Openpay secures $271 mln debt funding for U.S. launch

Openpay

06/10/2021 23:45

Oct 7 (Reuters) - Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm
Openpay Group  OPY.AX  said it had secured $271.4 million in
debt funding from Goldman Sachs Group  GS.N  and investment firm
Atalaya Capital Management to fund its upcoming launch in the
United States.
    The BNPL market exploded in the past year as homebound
consumers used the services to borrow and spend online during
the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting big players PayPal Holdings
 PYPL.O , Mastercard Inc  MA.N  and Visa Inc  V.N  into the
sector.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2P80L9  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2OP3RO
    The Melbourne, Australia-based payments firm said on
Thursday it will use the funding on marketing and partnerships,
as it competes with bigger rivals Afterpay  APT.AX  and Zip Co's
 Z1P.AX  Quadpay to capture the BNPL space in the United States.
 urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2MC4DQ  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL5N2KZ3JC
    "We will begin distributing BNPL in large volumes through
major ecosystem partnerships like payments processors, and
merchant aggregators requiring significant funding," said Brian
Shniderman, Openpay's U.S. chief executive officer.
    Openpay posted a record increase in its active merchants in
fiscal 2021, while active customers jumped nearly 70% to 541,000
at the end of August. (https://bit.ly/3BxJkXr)

 (Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini
Ganguli)
 ((Sameer.Manekar@thomsonreuters.com; +918061823447;))