Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Stocks - which one and why?

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Yeah, the question is who gets swallowed up by what.

Look at retail - big retail is eating small retail, but etail is swallowing both.

There's always a bigger fish etc.
 
On the mainstream news tonight. Possible Gov't action on predatory payday lenders. I'd call it more inaction.
In the report it was mentioned that the Gov't has given ASIC more powers to deal with this. Classic hand off.
 
peter2 said:
On the mainstream news tonight. Possible Gov't action on predatory payday lenders. I'd call it more inaction.
In the report it was mentioned that the Gov't has given ASIC more powers to deal with this. Classic hand off.
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They (authorities) can be quite powerful though, I have seen payday lenders taken to the cleaners (in terms of share price decimation) when they did these measures over the last number of years.

It's not hard to see the effects when you look at the long term share price decline of traditional payday lenders such as Radio Rentals i.e. Thorn Group Ltd (TGA) and Cashies i.e. Cash Converters International Ltd (CCV).
 
Commonwealth Bank will undercut Afterpay and conduct credit checks to reduce the risk of customers overcommitting themselves in the biggest competitive response of a major bank to the wildly successful buy now, pay later phenomenon.

CBA’s new product, CommBank BNPL, will allow up to 4 million of its retail customers to pay in four instalments. CBA aims to outflank the leaders of the rapidly growing buy now, pay later sector, such as Afterpay and Zip Co, but analysts are unsure whether the bank will be able to catch them after ceding so much territory

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I wonder if they tried to take it over and got told to do one and have had no choice but to go this way.

Seems grossly incompetent to be this late to the party otherwise.
 

Who Has BNPL Pole Position?​

By Mark Story |

... Afterpay ((APT)) holds the position as market leader in the domestic market for BNPL. It is the most downloaded, frequently used app, with the most traffic and unique visitors to the site.

Over in the UK, where the BNPL market will likely remain duopolistic, Swedish-based Klarna has developed and maintained a strong market share with first-mover advantage. However, since launching in the UK in June of 2019, Clearpay (Afterpay’s UK business) has seen a marked step-up in website traffic.

....across the Atlantic from the UK, and notice a much more oligopolistic market structure prevails in the US. There are three main competitors in Afterpay, US-based Affirm and Klarna, without a clear number one market player.

These are the some of the conclusions drawn by Jarden from recent data on trends and changes in competitive dynamics in key BNPL markets.

As an overlay to these findings, the competitive threat of PayPal needs to be considered. The company launched its BNPL product in August 2020 with a rollout through Germany, France, the UK and US, and is due to launch soon in Australia.

Also, specific to the US competitive landscape, Afterpay recently added non-network merchants to its app. Does this represent an evolution in the company’s revenue model?

www.sharecafe.com.au

Who Has BNPL Pole Position? - ShareCafe

While the struggle continues for BNPL supremacy across three continents, the Afterpay revenue model evolves and the spectre of PayPal looms large.
www.sharecafe.com.au www.sharecafe.com.au
 
L.I.C. "East 72", while losing 6.2% this quarter [ versus a 8.2% gain for the S&P 500 ] did have success shorting AfterPay over the 1/4 and it is shorting the $950 Million listed BNPL "Sezzle" . The fund manager says Sezzle's recent Form 10 lodgement with the US's SEC and ASX shows the pressure it's under from loss making BNPL loading alliances with larger merchants on onerous terms and outstandingly bad funding relationships.
 
Good to see big tech enter the BNPL sector. This spices things up a bit. PayPal's Pay in 4 has been switched on for Aussies with no late payment fees. That's going for the jugular of APT who collected $70mill in late fees in 2020.

I've been gobsmacked by all the BNPL companies flooding the ASX. They've been great trading but I've never considered them an investment worth holding. I believe that APT is still not profitable, in spite of it's market dominance.

This fintech payment sector is a rapidly evolving one. I wonder if the winning model can force the credit card interest rates down. If it wasn't for the lockdown, the APT/Z1P/SZL shorters would be dancing in the streets.
 
First mover advantage is not to be underestimated (a lot of books have been written on this very topic).

As to whether paypal and/or square will be able to stick a real thorn in the side of afterpay and the like remains to be seen.
 
Dona Ferentes said:
I'm waiting for PayPay, or Double Pay for short.
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I'm hanging out for
McScrooge Pay, where one never pays...

Meanwhile, Z1P slowly bouncing back from 6 month lows range...

Yesterday's news is now old... and created a buy the dip opportunity, imo.

New players won't be grabbing market share anytime quickly.
 
I have a different opinion. Established tech will slay the new dragon. If APT is not profitable now, when will it ever be? APT, Z1P will have to provide something else. PayPal can insert the new Pay in 4 with its existing offerings. I have used PayPal twice in the past year and they've already offered me the Pay in 4 deal with no late fees.
 
bsnews said:
PayPal do not have a very good track record.
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I agree based on a couple of hundred purchases using the system over the years.
peter2 said:
Established tech will slay the new dragon.
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Maybe, but that remains to be seen as @over9k pointed out.

The poor track record comes from past poor tech imo.
Not sure if they have that sorted yet?

I recently tried to cancel a card and add a new card used in PayPal and had a hard time doing it due to poor tech.
Meanwhile their "robodebt" style debt collection system rang me everyday.
It apparently has an automated message, I never heard it as the system seemed to be faulty and nothing was heard.
I looked the number up on line and found it was PayPal.
Meanwhile, I still couldn't add a new card because the old one wouldn't delete, or something like that...
Rather pathetic scenario and the whole episode left a sour taste all over a measly $25 or thereabouts that was payment directed to the defunct card.
My 2 cents.
 
I don't have a country bias but if there are good potential candidates on the asx I'll be checking them out.

Kinda agree with the fellow posters above that there is a lot of candidates entering pure BNPL space and it may be getting a little crowded. We've had some involvement with the leaders in the early days to realise some profits.

I still like the FinTech space in general without being limited to BNPL stocks. For that reason there is just one Fintech stock in the Speculative Stock Portfolio at the moment and it's more in the business lending segment as opposed to pure BNPL space. Surprisingly it's less affected by the BNPL slump today and actually having a good up day:
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By the way if you are worried about if the BNPL stock will ever be profitable, well this guy already pays dividends so hopefully that answers that all important question about profitability...
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Alternatively, just bet on the sector as a whole and buy up all four big names (afterpay, zip pay, square, paypal).

You know, simple pareto principle.
 
You'd assume their growth continues because each one has already gone through an astronomical share price appreciation. Two don't make a profit yet, and Square has a very high valuation that it needs to deliver on. Only PayPal has a slightly better valuation. None of them pay dividends.

Would've been good to have been on the whole journey all the way through, but as I mentioned there would have been a lot of fear to hold on at times as there was massive volatility in those stocks at times. It's been satisfying to take a few chunks of profit along the journey with the two asx stocks in their early days. And always looking for the next Afterpay or Square Inc if we can find them early.
 
Dona Ferentes said:
Barrier to entry?

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Absolute choc-o-block in the BNPL space. Great find :xyxthumbs

That's why it's better to find stocks that are out of favor or in sectors where everybody is not fighting for the last dollar.

I mean we are talking about making a tiny margin on late payments on small everyday stuff usually, like shop retail or online retail in most cases with these BNPL stocks and despite MAMOTH valuations, I don't know if some of these market darlings will ever be profitable. And now we have this many businesses fighting it out for that dollar and more joining the scene with IPO's, a crowded space would be an understatement.

If we need to talk big margins, we need to look for companies collecting payments on every transaction not just hoping and preying on people falling into the late payment debt traps. We are talking making a healthy commission on when a jumbo jet or private jet is sold from one owner to another or that luxury car or the Rollex is sold from one owner to another. How about making a commission on every car sold on eBay USA ? So I reckon there is a better than the 30Billion Afterpay Ltd (APT) in the making with Escrow.com. The only way to own a piece of that business is via owning a piece of the current Speculative Stock Portfolio stock Freelancer Ltd (FLN) which fell heavily today on delivering an amazing result of accelerating growth by Escrow.com and steady growth by Freelancer and the rest of the business... I will cover the breakdown of the results reported today in the spec portfolio if I have time.

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There is also a dividend paying profitable business lender that is not competing in the BNPL space in the spec portfolio which also had a healthy pull back in today's price action.
 
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Anyone else noticed that the service numbers for the banks, paypal and so forth have DRAMATICALLY improved since this BNPL war really kicked off?

I used to be nearly unable to think of anything more excruciating than having to deal with paypal, bank etc customer service, but I had to call paypal this afternoon and they were absolutely fantastic, expedited my issue, and even called me back a couple of hours later simply to let me know that the changes had been applied.

This was unthinkable 2-3 years ago.



On a related note, I nearly died of laughter upon calling their customer service people who are all obviously working from home in whatever third world asian country they're in only to hear an actual ROOSTER crowing at the top of its lungs in the background of the call.

Whilst I nearly died of laughter, the poor girl on the other end nearly died of embarrassment.

But I thought it was amazing.
 
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