Australia’s only profitable provider of pure play Buy-Now-Pay-Later services (BNPL) is set to expand its international footprint with the launch of businesses in the United Kingdom and Canada with humm (ASX: HUM) planning to be live in both regions before the end of 2021.
Plans are on track to launch in the UK by June while progress in Canada has been made with the appointment of Tim Moulton as Canada Country Head to oversee the rollout planned to be live by December. Moulton has previously led payment solutions and rewards divisions for the Royal Bank of Canada, securing major merchant partners Home Depot, Walmart, Apple, and Saks 5th Avenue during his tenure.
“I’m excited to be joining such an impressive organisation right at the point of its international expansion. Canadians are at an early stage of buy now pay later adoption compared to markets like Australia and humm, with its powerful credit decisioning tool and world-class customer experience, will appeal widely to Canadians and partners,” said Moulton.
Confirmation of humm’s international expansion timeline comes alongside a business update for the Australian operations where the Company continues to capitalise on demand for cash alternatives.
For the quarter ended March 31, 2021 which is generally the slowest for retail in the post-Christmas period, humm reported total transaction volumes of $255.3 million which represented a 33% increase on the previous corresponding period.
“hummgroup has performed strongly with our bigger Buy Now Pay Later product – and the ability to finance larger ticket items over longer terms – continuing to be a key point of differentiation,” said humm CEO, Rebecca James.
“The business delivered record transaction volume for our BNPL segment in March of $100.8m, eclipsing peak seasonal trade, normally reserved for December. The strong growth coincided with an improvement in net transaction margin driven by strong loss performance and low cost of funds.”
Differentiating its service to its competitors, humm offers BNPL purchases up to $30,000 which is particularly attractive in markets such as healthcare, home improvement and automotive – all merchants that actively engage humm for it’s customer-friendly payment solutions. These will be the targeted verticals in the UK and Canada initially where retail purchases across the regions have addressable markets of $161.3 billion for Home Improvement, $159.3 billion for health and $85 billion for Automotive.
Key to the increasing uptake of humm services has been its tech improvements that have seen the humm app downloaded 303.9k times, up 41% on the same time last year.
In it’s Half-Year results release, humm reported Statutory Net Profit After Tax of $38.6m making them the only profitable BNPL service provider on the ASX.
Alfred Chan is a Business Reporter at The Sentiment specialising in ASX-listed small cap companies, a bloodstock enthusiast and former equities analyst.
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