From the very early days, Afterpay formed a partnership with payments firm Touchcorp. Touchcorp provided the back-end payment systems that supported the Afterpay product, and would become a key player in Afterpay’s future.
Paloma+ Afterpay
This is the story behind Afterpay’s rise from start-up, to $25 billion international juggernaut.
Out of this frustration the idea for Afterpay was born. Why not allow customers to buy products online on lay-by, and pay them off over time? Better yet, why not make it interest-free and have the merchant pay a small fee in return for increased sales? Intuitively it made sense to Nick that this would work, and early experiments with his own jewellery site proved that this could be an incredibly powerful tool to increase conversion rates and sales.
In early 2017, Afterpay partnered with Paloma to design and develop iOS and Android apps. The result of this early partnership was a beautiful mobile product that would change the face of Australian retail.
At the outset of the project, Afterpay’s CEO Nick Molnar laid down the challenge - 'we need to launch a mobile app in twelve weeks'. This was an almost impossible timeframe; the first version of the app included the launch of in-store shopping, a new channel for Afterpay. 'How does 16 weeks sound?' countered Paloma’s Nick Frandsen. Both parties left the meeting with a handshake, and an agreement:Paloma would deliver Afterpay’s first mobile app in twelve weeks
Initially the launch was kept a secret, but the Afterpay fan-club quickly got whiff of it and the app took off. Within 24 hours of launch, Nick Molnar decided to go all-in and kick off an Australian-wide marketing effort. The Afterpay iOS app soared to #1 in the App Store within 48 hours. This gave some of the Paloma engineers a mild panic attack, but the launch came off without a hitch. Soon Afterpay soared above Facebook, YouTube and Instagram in app ratings withan average of 4.9/5 stars
on Apple’s iTunes Store
As more retailers started accepting Afterpay in-store, the engagement stats for the app went ballistic. Within twelve months of launch mobile traffic exceeded desktop traffic, and it has remained that way to the present day. To date the Afterpay app has been downloaded by over 6.3 million customers, with over 4.6 million monthly active users across the globe. In addition to this the app is widely loved by customers, with an average review of 4.9/5 stars on Apple’s iTunes Store – a feat accomplished by no other app in the Australian Top 50 app chart.
1,000,000+
App Downloads
In June of 2017, Afterpay’s web platform was frequently on its knees. Harking back to the very first days of Afterpay, the site had not been engineered for load and would crash as soon as traffic spiked. Given Afterpay’s relentless growth, everyone knew the situation needed to be addressed.
At this point in time, Afterpay.com.au was a much simpler product than it is today. Paloma knew that they could rebuild the web platform in a way that would be beneficial long-term, but they also knew that Afterpay had little interest in pausing for an uncertain period of time. Thus there was a conundrum, Paloma knew they could fix this problem for Afterpay;
But How
Could They
Prove this?
The idea was on the verge of feasibility - it would require around-the-clock development and there was no room for error. Paloma thought they had a chance, and over the following three days and nights, the team got to work building a sophisticated high-traffic prototype of Afterpay’s web platform. On Wednesday morning, bleary eyed, they headed into Afterpay’s Sydney office.
Paloma opened a browser, screencast onto a TV, and explained to Afterpay they were looking at a new and improved version of their web application - built to handle the aggressive international growth strategy that Afterpay would soon pursue.
A brief silence followed and laughter filled the room. Afterpay’s then Director of Product, David Whiteman, looked at the Doves with a smile and simply said ‘Well guys, looks like you’re looking after the web platform now’.
The new platform arrived just in time, as Afterpay was about to undergo a period of hyper growth unlike any technology company in Australia's history. Between May 2017 and September 2019, every imaginable metric in the company simply took off. As monthly active users soared from 870,000 to 4.7 million, web and mobile traffic went through the roof.
Customer Growth
Monthly Active Users
00.000%
Uptime Rate
700,000,000
server requests per week
Meteoric growth – by the numbers
Between May 2017 and September 2019, Afterpay’s customer-base grew 10x in size and the rest of the platform saw absurd growth across every metric measured. In-store codes generated grew from 100 to 1,700,000. Merchant referrals — clicks out of the Afterpay platform — grew from 62,000 per month, to 10,000,000 per month. The iOS and Android apps were downloaded a total of 6.3 million times. As a whole, the Afterpay platform crossed the theshold of processing over 10% of all Australian e-commerce transactions and $8 billion of global underlying sales serviced by 700 million requests to the consumer servers per week. As these staggering numbers continued to increase, Afterpay hit a milestone;
#2
In AUS
In 2019 Afterpay has become the second largest source of referral traffic in Australia after Google
Not content with being the fastest growing technology company in Australia, in 2017 Afterpay launched a grand international expansion plan that continues through to the present day.
In September 2017, Afterpay crossed the Tasman and launched into the New Zealand market by partnering with Trade Me. This move allowed Afterpay and Paloma to internationalise the product, and marked the first step in Afterpay’s global ambitions.
May 2018
USA
Nine months later, Afterpay launched in the US, the land of retail. With more retail spending in the state of California than the whole of Australasia, success in the US has the potential to transform Afterpay into a global payments giant.
May 2019
UK
In May 2019, Afterpay launched in the UK following the acquisition of local company ClearPay. With a $720 billion market, the UK is over twice the size of the Australian market.
The pace of international growth has required a substantial investment into the architecture of the Afterpay platform. This behind-the-scenes work on both the web and mobile platform includes automating build pipelines, managing conditional functionality by market, supporting region-specific operating teams and extending cloud infrastructure services.
Early traction in the US market
While still early days in the US market, the results so far have been astonishing. Afterpay has already acquired over 2.1 million new customers and over 4,700 retailers. The pipeline continues to be strong with around 6,500 retailers having signed agreements with Afterpay or are alrady in the process of integrating on the US platform. It took the Australian business approximately 28 months to deliver the $260 million of underlying sales that the US business achieved in the first six months of FY19.
In a partnership spanning three years, Afterpay and Paloma have built the fastest growing consumer technology platform in Australian history. With over 5.2 million monthly users transacting $7.2 billion annually across four international markets, Afterpay shows no signs of slowing down.
With all of this success to date, Paloma and Afterpay remain in a close strategic partnership.
Global Monthly
Users by Platform
Mobile
2.4 Million
Web
2.3 Million
Global Monthly
Merchant Referrals
0
May 2017
0
Sep 2019
Monthly In-Store
Purchasing Codes
1.7M
Sep 2019
100-200
Feb 2017
Online & In-Store
Afterpay Merchants
Weeklyrequests toAfterpayservers
700M
Weekly requests served by the global Afterpay consumer platform
MobileDownloads
6.3M
iOS and Android app downloads globally
AverageUptime
99.999%
Availability of the Afterpay consumer platform
GreaterThan
>10%
Of all e-commerce transactions in Australia are processed by Afterpay
HighestRated App inAustralia
4.9★
#1 rated mobile app out of top 50 apps in Australia
AustralianMillennials
27%
Of all Australian millennials are Afterpay customers
“Paloma have done an excellent job of supporting Afterpay with creativity, agility and technical proficiency. I would enthusiastically recommend Paloma to any business looking for a genuine partner to work with.”
Nick Molnar, Founder of Afterpay
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[email protected]* All data and figures sourced from Afterpay Touch public filings. Figures current at time of Afterpay acquisition by Block.