Kiwi BNPL giant Laybuy unavailable for merchants during “maintenance”
New Zealand buy now, pay later provider Laybuy has suspended payments on its platform, affecting shoppers and merchants during the busy end of financial year sales period.
New Zealand buy now, pay later provider Laybuy has suspended payments on its platform, affecting shoppers and merchants during the busy end of financial year sales period.
The New Zealand Herald reports Laybuy, which allows shoppers to split their purchases into six weekly payments, paused transactions on Friday.
The outage continued through Monday morning, with the BNPL provider’s website alerting visitors of disrupted service.
“The Laybuy platform is currently unavailable while undergoing maintenance and will be back up and running shortly,” it reads.
“Thank you for your patience.”
Laybuy, founded in 2016 by Gary Rohloff and his son Alex Rohloff, capitalised on the BNPL boom to become one of New Zealand’s leading providers.
It soon expanded into the United Kingdom, and in 2019 ventured into the Australian market, where it battled for market share against homegrown giants Afterpay and Zip.
Laybuy went public in September 2020 by listing on the Australian Securities Exchange, boasting an IPO raise of $80 million at a valuation of $358 million.
But the business was not immune from the industry-wide retraction in fintech investment, delisting from the ASX in March 2023 and re-listing on New Zealand’s Catalist exchange.
Today, the business list boasts a network of 14,000 merchants, spanning from apparel giants like Cotton On to small business retailers.
This includes a “small but respectable” presence in Australia, according to its Catalist listing.
SmartCompany has contacted LayBuy and Cotton On for comment.
More to come.
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