BNPL Megadeal: Zip buys Sezzle 🤝💸; Block finishes up 2021 strong 💪; Ruble crashes leading to Russian crypto exchange volumes soaring 🚀
Good Morning FinTech, March 1
Good morning Everyone,
And happy Tuesday & the 1st of March! Let’s hope this month will be much better and more peaceful. Here are the 3 FinTech stories you absolutely need to know today:
BNPL Megadeal: Zip buys Sezzle 🤝💸
Breaking news 🗞 Buy now, pay later (BNPL) firms Zip and Sezzle have announced a definitive agreement under which Australia-based Zip will buy Sezzle. I’ve written about this back in January while this was rumored, and now it’s inked.
The official release notes that Zip’s deal sets the implied price for Minneapolis-based Sezzle at 491M Australian dollars ($352M). That doesn’t sound much, honestly…
The combination of the two firms will have a total of 8.8M customers and over 60,000 merchants in the U.S. Not too bad, not too bad…
Key metrics 📊 Let us have a quick refresher as to how the firms have been performing lately. It must be noted that numbers-wise, both companies have been doing pretty well lately. Here are some facts & figures:
Zip has performed well in 2021. The firm posted $5.8B in volume (+176% annually), with 7.3M shoppers (+248% annually), per its annual report. It also more than doubled its retail partners to reach over 51k merchants worldwide.
Sezzle’s network - which boasted $1.6B in sales, 3.2M customers, and 44,400 merchants as of Q3 2021 - could substantially elevate its positioning. And Sezzle is more popular in the US: 11% of US respondents to a Momentive poll had used Sezzle, compared with just 4% who had used Zip.
So what does this deal tell us about the future of Zip and overall BNPL space? Here’s the takeaway: