With competition in the buy now pay later market heating up, DivideBuy has secured a £300m investment from Davidson Kempner Capital Management which it says will play an “instrumental” part in its future growth, allowing it to grow its 500-strong retailer network, both in the UK and internationally. The funding will also assist the business to achieve its target of £175 million gross merchandise value by the end of this year.
Rob Flowers, founder and CEO of DivideBuy, said: “DivideBuy has one goal – to make buy now pay later transactions easy and accessible to retailers and customers. The sheer scale of this investment underlines the strength of DivideBuy’s business model, and how we’re revolutionising the point-of-sale (POS) finance sector by owning the full lending journey with assistive technology, automated soft credit checks and transparent lending with no hidden fees.
“The flexibility of our technology treats each customer as an individual, and also gives retailers revenue-boosting strengths such as higher checkout conversions and higher basket sizes. With this backing from Davidson Kempner, we can now make buy now pay later transactions available to even more retailers and extend the alternate payment method to many more consumers who want greater payment choice at the POS. We’re thrilled to embark on the next stage of our expansion and achieve our ambitious growth plans”.
DivideBuy provides interest-free credit (IFC) solutions for more than 500 retail partners, including Cloud Nine and Simba Sleep, allowing customers to spread the cost of their purchases, completely interest-free. The business secured over £60m of equity investment and debt financing two years ago which it used to develop its technology and accelerate its lending. The latest investment follows an already successful 12 months for the company which reported an average three-year growth rate of 20.7 per cent to the year 2019/20.
It also comes after it confirmed a new partnership with musicMagpie for which it will create a rental platform.
Mr Flowers added: “The partnerships we’ve secured with leading businesses like musicMagpie demonstrates how much our solution resonates with consumers looking for more flexible and affordable ways to pay. With the backing of Davidson Kempner, we have set ourselves the ambitious task of growing exponentially within the interest-free market, while being true to our original aim of creating greater value for retailers everywhere and enhancing the entire buying, or indeed, renting, experience for customers by creating intuitive, user-driven platforms.”
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