Investing News NetworkAUSTRALIA

An ASX-listed financial technology company with North American operations has reached an important growth milestone.

Payment solution company Sezzle (ASX:SZL) told investors on Monday (February 10) that it now has over 1 million active users on its purchasing platform.

Shares for the Minnesota-based company ended the trading day on Monday at AU$1.84. Year-to-date, the company is up 11.1 percent.

Sezzle attributes its recent growth in part to last year’s Christmas shopping season, particularly Black Friday and Cyber Monday in Canada and the US. Activity during that time helped the firm increase its user base from the 500,000 consumers reported in August of last year.

The firm noted that during the four days between the two shopping occasions it added over 36,000 new customers to its platform.

Sezzle has operations in both the US and Canada and provides its users with a proprietary payment platform that connects buyers and retailers, allowing buyers to split their payments over time.

CFO Paul Paradis called the milestone “pivotal” in a press release, adding that the firm is working to gain traction in the “buy now, pay later” segment in the US.

Fintech continues to be a fast-growing sector in Australia. A report from Fintech Global found that 72.8 percent of investments made into Australian fintech companies were valued at or over AU$100 million in 2019, with the market garnering AU$1.4 billion in total during the year.

News of Sezzle’s growing consumer base follows the approval of the company’s January application for a lending license in California from the state’s Department of Business Oversight.

Previously, Sezzle operated under a retail instalment structure in California through which the retailers started instalment loans and then transferred them to Sezzle. With the new licence, Sezzle is now in control of loans with a direct lending structure.

In its results for Q4 2019, the firm reported underlying merchant sales on its platform of US$105.1 million, a quarter-over-quarter rise of 52.6 percent compared to the US$68.8 million seen in Q3 2019.

Annualized merchant sales grew as well, rising 469 percent year-over-year to US$420.2 million, up from US$73.8 million in Sezzle’s fiscal 2018 year.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Danielle Edwards, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.