Japanese FinTech Paidy Rides BNPL Popularity, May File IPO This Year

Japanese fintech Paidy, working in the buy now, pay later (BNPL) field, is considering going public, a report from Financial Times (FT) says.

BNPL has become a worldwide crowded market and has seen big players arise, including Klarna from Sweden, Affirm from Silicon Valley and PayPal.

Paidy counts among its followers 6 million people, many of whom are women between the ages of 18 and 34. And while BNPL has begun to catch on in Japan, it’s being adopted there more slowly than at the global level. On the global level, there has been a large surge in BNPL because of the shift during the pandemic toward eCommerce and digital payments.

Paidy’s services allow users to access post-payment, letting shoppers pay for a month’s worth of purchases the next month. The company rolled out a new service allowing consumers to split the cost of a payment into three installments with zero interest, which the report says is the first time that’s happened in Japan.

The company is considered a “unicorn” and is backed by firms including trading house Itochu, PayPal and Goldman Sachs, the report says.

The report says market players and investors think Paidy is likely to file an IPO in Tokyo this year. The company has said there’s no real timetable for a listing this year, though.

“We have access to capital. In our business, it’s also important to have access to credit lines, which we do, but at the same time, every company does mature and get to the point where it also makes sense to be a public company,” Russell Cummer, Paidy’s founder, told the Financial Times.

The BNPL space has become more crowded, with Amazon moving into the industry with a new partnership with Affirm, which could give it the ability to add more payment methods for customers.

See more: Amazon Moves Into BNPL Space With Affirm Partnership