• Zip has become one of Australia’s largest 200 publicly traded companies on the back of aggressive growth.
• It comes on the back of a major deal struck with eBay as well as an expansion into the US via its acquisiton of QuadPay.
• “Going forward, we will be looking at smaller bets in other markets and looking at how to become a true global powerhouse,” co-founder Peter Gray told Business Insider Australia.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The buy now, pay later platform will become just the second to be inaugurated into the club of Australia’s largest publicly traded companies.

Zip, valued at $3.63 billion at the end of trade on Thursday, will enter the ASX200 later this month once the index is rebalanced to reflect the current top 200 companies ranked by market cap.

“The Australian stock exchange has proven a fertile ground for [buy now, pay later] businesses, and certainly for us it’s been a good platform to play,” Zip co-founder Peter Gray told Business Insider Australia.

As a result, Zip could soon become part of more Australian investors’ portfolios, becoming included in ETFs that track the ASX200.

It comes a little over two years since rival Afterpay’s own ascension. Since entering in June 2018, it has grown into a $23 billion-plus company that for a time was bigger than Coles.

Meanwhile, competitors Sezzle and SplitIt will join the S&P All Technology Index, which includes some of Australia’s largest growth companies.

The moves mark the significant rise of buy now pay later companies, which since March lows have exploded on the back of aggressive expansion. The drive higher minted Afterpay co-founder Nick Molnar as the country’s youngest self-made billionaire, while Zip’s stock price quintupled in the space of weeks.

The appetite for the platforms, which appeared to reach fever pitch last week, now seems to be coming off the boil. All the platforms have lost some momentum this week, partly on the back of PayPal’s announcement it would become a competitor in the space, and perhaps partly on pure exhaustion of a mercurial market.

But all are still chasing aggressive growth.

For Zip, that included a major deal signed with eBay last week to extend credit to 40,000 Australian businesses. It follows from a deal with Amazon in November which made the service to be available to Australian customers.

“Arguably the shift to online that has been accelerated throughout the COVID has been to our benefit, and you know, we’re certainly well poised to capitalize on that opportunity,” Gray said.

Meanwhile, the acquisition of QuadPay will see Zip essentially double its user base and marks its first major expansion plans into the US z – a new territory in which it will again knock heads with Afterpay.

“We’re really excited about that and at the ways we can turbocharge our growth. Going forward, we will be looking at smaller bets in other markets and looking at how to become a true global powerhouse,” Gray said.

“We have very big ambitions.”

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