The Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) share price is up 7% in early reaction to news of its latest acquisition.
Zip Co provides customers with a revolving line of credit to finance their retail purchase with its brands of Zip Pay, Zip Money and Pocketbook. It is one of the largest buy now, pay later providers in Australia. Some of its largest clients include Bunnings Warehouse, Appliances Online, EB Games and Officeworks.
Zip Co’s Latest Acquisition
Zip Co is acquiring the Australian and New Zealand businesses of global small and medium enterprise (SME) lending company Spotcap which provides “significant” capability in the SME credit space.
The acquisition will give Zip with a proven SME credit ‘decisioning’ platform that has been live in the market since 2015 and has originated over $200 million in credit lines on the platform.
The total cost of the acquisition is $8.825 million which will be paid in Zip shares.
It will also means that it significantly accelerates the recently-announced Zip Biz buy now, pay later product in Australia and New Zealand.
Zip will also get approximately $23 million in Australian SME receivables and four years of credit performance data.
What may be the most useful for Zip is that it gets access to the underlying intellectual property and technical code base which will be licensed perpetually from Spotcap Global to help drive innovation in Zip’s business-focused digital wallet.
Spotcap ANZ’s management team will remain with the business and join Zip.
Zip CEO and Managing Director Larry Diamond said: “Extending our consumer BNPL product offering into the SME space is a natural evolution for Zip. The strategic acquisition of Spotcap will fast-track the delivery of this product using a proven origination platform that is live in the Australian and New Zealand markets.”
Is The Zip Co Share Price A Buy?
Zip Co has now made a few acquisitions to grow into new lending categories and expand internationally.
I think Zip could be worth watching over the next few years. But there’s plenty of competition in the industry from Afterpay Touch Group Ltd (ASX: APT) and others, which is why I would prefer to buy shares in the free report below.
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