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- Buy now pay later company Sezzle (SZL) has reported on exceptional results during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period
- Every income bracket increased their Black Friday spending by an average of 34.1 per cent
- Over 36,000 new active customers were added compared to 8000 for the same time last year
- However, credit card and cash payments decreased showing the growing preference of Sezzle’s platform
- Despite this news, Sezzle is currently down a slight 0.43 per cent with shares trading for $2.32 apiece
Buy now pay later company Sezzle (SZL) has reported on exceptional results during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period.
In the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday and when combined with Cyber Monday marks the start of the holiday shopping season.
According to recently released data by PYMTS, this year 151 million shoppers in the U.S. purchased on Black Friday alone.
Furthermore, consumers across every income bracket increased their Black Friday spending by 34.1 per cent, on average, between 2018 and 2019.
Over the four days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Sezzle added over 36,000 new active customers representing a significant increase to the added 8000 the same time last year.
Underlying merchant sales (UMS) were up 402 per cent versus 2018 to US$11.3 million (AUD$16.5 million), comparing extremely well with Sezzle’s UMS of US$157.5 million (AUD$230.5 million) for the first 12 months to September 30, 2019.
“The strong Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales have provided a very favourable backdrop for Sezzle’s December Quarter,” Sezzle CEO Charlie Youakim commented.
“We enjoyed very robust new customer additions for just four days of sales, and the UMS of US$11.3 million during this brief sales frenzy equates to more than seven per cent of Sezzle’s UMS in the entire last four quarters,” he added.
Important to note, a key tailwind for Sezzle’s business, the declining use of credit cards for retail purchases was strongly evident over the sales period as payment methods other than credit cards were used by a majority of shoppers.
According to the PYMNTS survey of 2000 customers, in-store use of credit cards by shoppers declined from 50.2 per cent of shoppers in 2018 to 49.3 per cent this year.
The use of cash payments also dropped from 39.3 per cent to 36.3 per cent, however, the use of credit cards for online purchases saw an even bigger fall from 66.4 per cent of shoppers in 2018 to 54.3 per cent in 2019.
“The decline in the use of credit cards and heavy utilisation of mobile phones during the iconic Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales even provides further compelling evidence of the growing preference by consumers for alternative payment methods such as Sezzle,” Charlie concluded.
However, despite this news Sezzle is currently down a slight 0.43 per cent with shares trading for $2.32 apiece at 3:22 pm AEDT.
