The Australian government is looking to tighten the regulation of the “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) sector as it hopes to stop more customers from falling into dire financial straits. Speaking to Nine Network on Nov. 21, Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said the BNPL industry could be subject to the same regulation as the…

Australian buy now, pay later firm Afterpay Ltd. said on Wednesday its $29 billion buyout by payments firm Block Inc., previously known as Square Inc, has received approval from the Bank of Spain, making the deal fully unconditional. With this approval, the companies can now implement the deal, which would be Block’s biggest to date…

One of Australia’s top financial advisors has called out the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) sector’s business model saying its supposed benefits are illusory. In his latest report, “Afterpay: The Hype and the Reality”, Prof. Janek Ratnatounga, CEO of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (CMA) Australia & New Zealand and a former consultant to the World Bank, said…

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has announced it will launch its own buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform, StepPay. StepPay will be competing with other BNPL platforms like AfterPay, which signed a historic $39 billion acquisition deal with American company Square on Aug. 3. Existing CBA customers will be able to use the new BNPL service…

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey’s digital payments platform, Square, announced on Monday that it entered a $39 billion (US$29 bn) agreement to acquire one of Australia’s leading buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) companies, Afterpay. “Square and Afterpay have a shared purpose,” Square CEO Jack Dorsey said in a joint statement. “We built our business to make the financial…

According to a recent survey, over 60 percent of Australian millennials don’t have a savings plan for their future, while a third only save occasionally. Commbank research surveyed 1,002 Australians aged 24-39 during April and studied millennials’ attitudes and habits towards their personal finances. It found that only two in five have a regular savings…

Commonwealth Bank boss Matt Comyn expects scrutiny and regulatory concerns to increase for buy now, pay later providers, despite authorities declining to impose conditions on the credit providers. Comyn on January 28 remained convinced that the likes of Afterpay and Zip, which tend to charge late payment fees rather than interest, will eventually face tighter…