In 2015, Nick Molnar was living with his parents in Sydney, Australia,
and selling jewelry from a desktop computer in his childhood bedroom.
Hocking everything from $250 Seiko watches to $10,000 engagement rings,
the 25-year-old had gotten so good at online marketing that he had
become Australia’s top seller of jewelry on eBay, shipping thousands of
packages a day.
That same year, he teamed up with Anthony Eisen, a former investment
banker who was 19 years his senior and lived across the street. They
cofounded Afterpay, an online service that allows shoppers from the
U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada to pay for small-ticket
items like shoes and shirts in four interest-free payments over six
weeks. “I was a Millennial who grew up in the 2008 crisis, and I saw
this big shift away from credit to debit,” the now 30-year-old Molnar
says today. Either lacking credit cards or fearful of racking up
high-interest-rate debt on their credit cards, Molnar’s generation was
quick to embrace this new way to buy and get merchandise now, while
paying a little later.
Five years later, Molnar and Eisen, who each own roughly 7% of the
company, have become billionaires—during a pandemic. After initially
tanking at the start of lockdowns, shares of Afterpay—which went public
in 2016—are up nearly tenfold, thanks to a surge in business tied to
e-commerce sales. In the second quarter, it handled $3.8 billion of
transactions, an increase of 127% versus the same period a year earlier.
Several Covid-driven developments are helping specific types of
fintech players. For example, consumers’ shift to more online spending
and delivery services is a boon to certain companies powering payments.
Marqeta, a specialized payments processor whose clients include
Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates, has been in talks to go public at an $8 billion valuation, four times what it was valued at in March of 2019. That would give CEO Jason Gardner, who owns an estimated 10% of Marqeta, a stake worth $800 million.
Meanwhile, the $2 trillion-plus CARES Act Congress passed in March,
with its $1,200-per-adult stimulus checks, student loan payment holiday
and (now expired) $600-a-week unemployment supplements, helped many
Americans keep financially above water—and some digital banks like Chime
to prosper.
Read more at:
The Pandemic Plutocrats: How Covid Is Creating New Fintech Billionaires
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