• Afterpay has released a new report claiming it supports as many as 63,000 local jobs, when you count direct and indirect jobs as well as the spending of the people in them.
• The buy now, pay later company goes on to claim that it saved Australians more than $110 million in fees when compared to credit cards and generated billions of dollars worth of extra sales.
• The positive publicity push comes as the buy now, pay later sector faces growing scrutiny over a lack of regulation.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Afterpay is talking up its economic credentials as it looks to legitimise the burgeoning buy now, pay later sector and fight growing criticism.

Commissioning Accenture to conduct the research, the $37 billion company contends it has now become an integral part of the local economy, even as the RBA concludes it represents too “small” a proportion of payments to reign in.

Afterpay claims it directly supports 11,000 jobs and 63,000 more broadly. Of the latter, 33,000 are credited as ‘indirect jobs’ within the supply chain of retailers. The final 19,000 are tenuously claimed to be supported by the spending of the first two cohorts.

In terms of its actual payroll, the company counts just 700 employees. For comparison, the similarly-valued Telstra employs around 30,000.

Afterpay also says it delivered on its mandate of making Australians spend more, to the tune of $6 billion. This, it boasts, includes $500 million to regional retailers and $1.7 billion to small and medium businesses. After Afterpay extracted its fees, retailers were allegedly $3 billion better off.

Not to forget those actually spending that money, Afterpay claims it also saved customers $110 million in fees they would have otherwise incurred, had they paid with credit cards instead. Using this relatively low bar, the company argues that vulnerable Australians “gain the most” with Afterpay, paying as much as “seven times” less in fees.

Those who can afford to pay on time and with their own money, evidently, have even less to lose with cash.

“Buy now, pay later services can be a handy tool if you’re short on cash but they can really sting if you aren’t careful,” Finder head of consumer research Graham Cooke told Business Insider Australia, noting one in five users get hit by late fees. “There is no such thing as free credit.”

In the space of a few short years, Afterpay amassed three million customers and become synonymous with the explosive sector it by default represents. Exclusive Finder data suggests as many as half of Australia’s adult population has used a BNPL platform, with almost 40% of those going with Afterpay.

Commenting on his team’s findings, Accenture managing director Andrew Charlton went as far as to conclude that “both consumers and merchants win in the Afterpay revolution”.

“For retailers and small business during the pandemic, Afterpay was an invaluable sales channel, allowing them to connect to internet-savvy, budget-conscious consumers while at the same time, growing their topline and improving operating efficiency,” Charlton said.

The charm offensive comes hot on the heels of criticism from the big banks late last week, as they pressured policymakers and regulators alike to tackle the $40 billion Australian sector.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn singled Afterpay out by name, describing it as “quite a feat” that it had managed to sidestep all such regulatory efforts so far.

“My point is based on size and scale, they are [now] beyond the point where the legislation framework that applies to that sector needs to be comprehensively reviewed,” he said, also alleging buy now, pay later players had greatly understated their costs.

Afterpay denies that allegation and now it appears to be hitting back.

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