Affirm and Shopify Expand Shop Pay to Australia, the Pair’s Fourth Market

The installment-payments platform Affirm Holdings Inc. and online commerce service Shopify late Thursday announced they have expanded their 5-year-old collaboration, Shop Pay Installments, to Australia.

The service, which lets consumers use the Shop Pay button to check out on e-commerce sites and then pay over time with Affirm, is active in the U.S, the U.K., and Canada, attracting what the parties say amounts to “millions” of shoppers since Shop Pay’s 2021 launch. The news also represents Affirm’s return to the Australian market, which it quit in February 2023 in a cost-cutting move that let the buy now, pay later specialist concentrate on its stronger U.S. and Canadian markets.

“Australians helped shape buy now, pay later as we know it,” says Nitin Kashid, Affirm’s country manager for Australia, in a statement. Shopify and Affirm say they expect to bring Shop Pay to more countries, without adding details.

Shop Pay is used by more than 250 million shoppers where it is now available, according to Shopify, which calls the service “the world’s highest-converting checkout.”  Merchants turn on the service through Shopify’s administration dashboard. The service carries no fee, though merchants pay ordinary card-processing costs.

The expected return to Australia comes as Affirm reported late Thursday a 36% year-over-year rise in its gross-merchandise volume for the June quarter, to $14.1 billion. The period marked the San Francisco-based company’s 11^th straight quarter of volume growth exceeding 30% as its count of active consumers increased 21%, to 27.8 million. Affirm’s revenue meanwhile rose 33%, to $1.17 billion.

Active merchants using Affirm reached 571,000, up 51%. “We’re still early,” the company noted in its earnings release, adding its service is available at “about 80” of the 250 largest e-commerce sites globally and “just 10%” of e-commerce merchants.