Ann: Investor presentation including July/August revenue update, page-18

Actually looking at website rankings for these business is almost a complete waste of time and arguably irrelevant.

Not all the players are in all the markets. Someone who is focusing on smaller markets or say not in the US could still be doing well and not have significant traffic. Some of the players could do the bulk of their business via mobile apps, so they will not be captured in the website traffic. Some of the businesses could be spending large amounts on marketing to boost their web traffic. Some businesses (like Klarna) have the vast majority of their business completely unrelated to BNPL and are a payment gateway for e-commerce businesses, and banking services (most people don't realise that Klarna is actually a bank). Some of the businesses run multiple brands, so a single site doesn't capture the relevant information.

Each of the BNPL providers have a different focus and strategy, so you need to look at that and understand that. And ultimately understand the underlying economics of the business. What that shows is that in a single market, once you get to a reasonable scale with repeat customers the business is profitable (and can be highly profitable). Have a look at the segment information for Afterpay to see some of the signs on this. Entering a new market results in losses as you weed out bad customers. And then ultimately, the overall efficiency of the business (management team and the wider employee group) are critical to determine the level of profits that may be achieved.

But at the end of the day, over the longer term, the businesses need to get to scale and become profitable. Only time will tell, but in the meantime, we need to see metrics and data to show that they are going in the right direction. What do I look for? Growth in GMV... increase in repeat customers % (although in new markets if repeat customers are too high it could also mean that the business isn't growing fast enough)... reductions in gross losses (and net losses)... and ultimately growth in Net Transaction Margin. If you know GMV and NTM, then you can at least tell what portion of their fixed cost base they are starting to cover.

Cheers
Marv