Jack Dorsey’s Square to snap up Australian rival Afterpay for £21bn
Payments firm Square is set to snap up buy now, pay later company Afterpay for some £21bn, in the biggest buyout of an Australian firm to date.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who also co-founded Square, said that the payments company and Afterpay have a “shared purpose”.
The deal will peg the merging companies as a global transactions giant, as online retail continues to soar in popularity.
The buy now, pay later business model that has accompanied the boom in online shopping, means shoppers can buy whatever they want by gradually paying off small point-of-sale loans in interest-free instalments which bypass credit checks.
Afterpay’s founders, Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar, are looking at a payday of around £1.3bn each once the deal closes.
“We built our business to make the financial system more fair, accessible, and inclusive, and Afterpay has built a trusted brand aligned with those principles,” Dorsey said in the statement.
The Twitter founder added that together, the firms can “deliver even more compelling products and services for merchants and consumers, putting the power back in their hands.”
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission must first approve the deal and “will consider it carefully once we see the details”.