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Square is buying Afterpay for $29 billion

A 'buy now, pay later' company enters the Square ecosystem.

Square is acquiring Afterpay for $29 billion.

Square CEO Jack Dorsey

Photo: Amal KS/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Square said Sunday it is acquiring Australian "buy now, pay later" company Afterpay in a $29 billion deal.

Square said buying Afterpay, a leading player in the fast-growing BNPL market, would help boost the financial services company's Cash App payments ecosystem. Afterpay serves more than 16 million consumers and roughly 100,000 merchants worldwide as of June 2021, the company said. It gives Square a powerful entrant in a race that includes Klarna, Affirm and others.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. It's only the latest of Square's big recent moves, which include acquiring a majority stake in Tidal and launching a new cryptocurrency project currently known as TBD.

Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.

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