New Markets Are Just the Ticket for Affirm And Nuvei

Ticketing is set for rapid growth, and payments firms are jockeying to get a piece of the action. Affirm Inc. announced early Tuesday it will offer its buy now, pay later option for lift tickets sold through Cali Pass at more than 20 ski resorts, six of them in California. The potential here for Affirm could be substantial. One pass costs $729 for adults, and $679 for teens through age 22, according to information from Cali Pass.

At the same time, Montreal-based Nuvei Corp. said it will process ticket sales for Vivaticket, an Italy-based service for museums, soccer clubs, and other markets. It claims 2,200 clients in 50 countries, including Paris’s Louvre Museum.

The Cali Pass alliance with Affirm, which is set to start with the 2025-26 season, will allow skiers to buy a pass in an online transaction at checkout or at the resorts by scanning a QR code, the partners say.

The tie-in with Cali Pass follows a number of steps Affirm has taken this year to expand its market. Last week, the company announced it had signed Costco Wholesale Club and Mattress Firm as clients. In April, the company announced it would begin credit reporting through TransUnion, and earlier that month said it would manage installment-payment plans for Shopify Inc., the big Canadian commerce platform.

In the Nuvei-Vivaticket tie-in, the processor will offer local acquiring and authorization for the ticketing-software provider, first in Italy, then in other countries, according to the companies’ announcement. Vivaticket’s clients include the Louvre Museum, the Eiffel Tower, and soccer clubs in Rome and Milan.

Philip Fayer, chairman and chief executive at Nuvei, called the deal with Vivaticket “another milestone” in his company’s ambition to expand into global markets. “With Vivaticket, we’re proving how our platform can unlock global revenue by providing seamless, localized payment experiences to customers worldwide,” he said in a statement.

Online event-ticket sales in the U.S. market are projected to grow from $25.5 billion in 2022 to $39.8 billion in 2027, according to Statista.

The Vivaticket link follows other moves Nuvei has made this year to expand internationally. In one example, it announced a major thrust in Asia with its acquisition of Paywiser Japan Ltd., which gave the company a second headquarters in Tokyo.