Thread for new large retailers on the platform, page-459

Stefan, you do realise that we have only just had a comprehensive update on the performance of Afterpay across each of its regions, so we essentially currently have real time actual performance indicators (to the end of October). The UK is performing exceptionally well.

At 31 October there were over 400k customers in the UK, compared to 320k in the US 1 year earlier (the UK launch was almost exactly 1 year after the US, which makes comparisons very easy and valid) despite the UK having only 1/5 of the population of the US. In the month of October, over 4,000 customers per day were signed up in the UK which is almost double the sign up rate in the US in October 2018. This is a phenomenally strong number.

The value in the alternative metrics data which many people are tracking (which is greatly appreciated) is to fill the gaps between updates from the company particularly when it might be a few months since the last update. This is not the case currently as the last update was only 1 week ago. You have been expressing concern about the UK for some time now based on the metrics you are tracking, but these metrics are not marrying up with the real metrics (customers, merchants, GMV) reported by the company. Ultimately it is only these metrics which matter so it might be worthwhile trying to figure out why what you are tracking is not matching with actual performance in the UK.

To be clear, I am in no way dismissing the threat of competition and I do believe that Klarna will be a tough nut to crack in the UK given their incumbency and particularly when the company does not have access to the Afterpay brand in the UK. That said, the numbers so far out of the UK have significantly exceeded my expectations and if I was Klarna I’d be extremely worried.