The American buy now, pay later platform Affirm is leaving the Australian market a month after letting go of 19% of its staff.
In a notice on its website, the company says:
“As of 28 February 2023, Affirm has made the decision to begin an orderly wind-down of our operations in Australia.”
Active loan holders are getting emails, but their plans won’t change.
Max Levchin, who helped start PayPal, started Affirm in 2012. It works with thousands of merchants to let millions of people in the US, Canada, and Australia pay for things over time.
The company rode the BNPL wave to an IPO in 2021, and since then it has made deals with major companies like Amazon and Target.
But last month, the company said it was getting rid of 500 jobs and giving up on its crypto plans. Levchin said, “Everything changed in mid-2022.”
He continued:
“Growing rapidly over the last few years, and especially through the pandemic, we hired ahead of the revenue required to support the size of the team.”
Australia was once thought to be a good place for BNPL to grow, but Affirm’s departure comes just a few weeks after a local player, Openpay, went bankrupt.
