Davidson Kempner can take stake in ‘buy now fork out later’ supplier DivideBuy | Business News

DivideBuy, a “purchase now shell out afterwards” (BNPL) service provider, has struck a £300m deal with a prominent hedge fund that it hopes will assist it to capture a better slice of the speedy-developing instantaneous credit history industry.

Sky News understands that Davidson Kempner Funds Administration has agreed a new £300m lending facility with DivideBuy and will also obtain a minority equity stake in the enterprise.

The settlement, which will be introduced in the coming days, will come as BNPL operators these kinds of as Klarna see their valuations increase to stratospheric stages on the back again of soaring consumer desire and enhancing technological innovation.

DivideBuy, which was started in 2014, has partnerships with far more than 500 suppliers and makes credit score conclusions within 60 seconds.

Based mostly in Stoke-on-Trent, the company has earlier captivated backing from the non-public financial investment cars of popular business figures like Jon Moulton and Sir Brian Souter.

The interest-totally free credit score place-of-sale (POS) finance market was value £10bn final calendar year, and is forecast by some analysts to be worth £27bn by 2024.

Rob Flower, DivideBuy’s founder and chief govt, claimed that the Davidson Kempner transaction “underlines the energy of DivideBuy’s small business model, and how we’re revolutionising the POS finance sector by possessing the entire lending journey with assistive know-how, automated tender credit checks and clear lending with no hidden charges”.

“The flexibility of our technologies treats each client as an person, and also gives shops profits-boosting strengths this sort of as increased checkout conversions and increased basket sizes.”

DivideBuy argues that it is differentiated from rivals for the reason that it delivers both a technology platform and credit facility to retail companions, a go which gets rid of regular credit history providers.

Fascination in the BNPL sector has been further more stoked in the latest weeks by the information that Apple and Amazon have struck specials to let buyers to make payments in instalments for purchases from the two tech giants.