Afterpay keeps grip on buy now pay later with 66% market share
Despite increasing competition in the buy now, pay later market, Afterpay continues to dominate app store downloads, with a huge market share.
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Afterpay continues to overwhelmingly dominate the app store downloads of buy now, pay later services with 66 per market share in Australia, as competition heats up for customers.
Zip is making small inroads, with its market share rising to 29 per cent from 28 per cent, and other smaller players are growing at faster rates but off a low base, according to new research from Macquarie.
Afterpay — which has tapped Australian actress Rebel Wilson to spruik its services in a new global advertising campaign — accounts for 62 per cent, based on the market share of ratings across Apple and Google’s app stores.
Behind in second place is local rival Zip with 27 per cent market share, followed by third-place Latitude with 5 per cent. Humm and Openpay account for 3 and 2 per cent, respectively.
Swedish fintech group Klarna sits on just 0.58 per cent market share. followed by Laybuy on 0.09 per cent, according to Macquarie’s updated monthly dataset tracking the number and average score of ratings across Google Play and Apple App stores.
Star rating changes for buy now, pay later apps were mixed, with Laybuy recording the biggest rise but overall it still ranked below the sector’s average. On the iOS Appstore rankings, Afterpay dropped to fourth place from second.
While acknowledging it’s still early days, Macquarie expects the buy now, pay later market to go through a period of consolidation in the medium term before seeing better days.
“That said, we also see opportunities as a result of the large volatility to find strategic entry points into the sector,” Macquarie said, noting it recently upgraded Afterpay to an outperform rating.
In the US, Afterpay remains the top player in the buy now, pay later app store by the number of aggregate ratings, but the company has continued to see slower momentum than its peers.
Afterpay’s ranking has continue to show improvement on the Appstore, ranking 13th in shopping, up one spot. Its comment market share slipped to 36 per cent as of June 1 from 37 per cent last month. That compares to Affirm’s 35 per cent.
Sezzle’s comments have seen a jump in numbers of 37 per cent month on month. This was the case across both Google Play and iOS App store with 27 and 42 per cent, respectively.
Klarna continues to dominate the British buy now, pay later market, with 87 per cent market share, based on the number of app comments.
Clearpay held on to 12 per cent market share in the US, while the fastest growth was recorded by butter, accounting for 37 per cent.
Originally published as Afterpay keeps grip on buy now pay later with 66% market share
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