Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) shares were the most traded share on the ASX last week for the second week in a row.
After reaching highs of close to $15 per share in February, it seems a lot of hype around the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) sector has normalised to some extent.
Zip’s shares are trading at $8.32 each at the time of writing and have returned over 300% over the past 12 months.
Z1P share price
Zip becomes Adobe Accelerate partner
Last week, Zip announced it had recently become an Accelerate partner in the Adobe Inc (NASDAQ: ADBE) Exchange Partner Program – Adobe’s partner ecosystem that works by integrating technologies.
One of Adobe’s subsidiaries, Magento, is an e-commerce platform that blends digital commerce, order management and predictive intelligence to enhance online shopping across various industries and business models.
Under the partnership, Zip’s BNPL platform will be available to thousands of Magento merchants around the world that handle hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions each year.
Zip hasn’t provided too much more information regarding the partnership that might suggest how much additional revenue it could generate.
Zip to introduce bereavement leave
According to an article published in the Australian Financial Review yesterday, Zip will be introducing two weeks’ bereavement leave for its employees who have suffered a miscarriage.
Chief people officer, Anna Buber-Farovich noted the introduction of Zip’s bereavement leave came in response to the New Zealand government’s similar approach of offering three days’ paid leave for both mothers and their partners following a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The change is aimed to encourage a more open workplace culture and to be recognised as one of the best places to work.
In addition to newly introduced bereavement leave, Zip also offers caregivers who’ve returned from parental leave their full-time salary for the first three months, even if they work fewer hours.
Summary
There seems to have been some positive announcements for Zip over the past couple of weeks.
Improving workplace culture may be an upfront cost, but the payoff for organisations that focus on employee retention is likely to be much greater for the company’s overall success in the long run.
There’s definitely a good bull case to be made for the BNPL industry. Realistically, we’re still in the early stages with fairly low adoption rates as a proportion of total retail sales.
One aspect to consider would be how new regulation might affect some of these companies, which you can read about here: What tougher regulation could mean for BNPL shares… Will Zip (ASX: Z1P) and Afterpay (ASX: APT) survive?