Afterpay Money could branch into mortgages next year

Earlier this month, the ASX-listed buy now, pay later (BNPL) service provider Afterpay Australia launched Money by Afterpay (Money), which leverages Westpac’s banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution to provide the 3.6 million Afterpay customers with access to savings accounts and personal finance management (PFM) tools.

While the money and lifestyle app is currently focused on spending and savings, there is scope for it to move into mortgages from next year.

Speaking on a recent Westpac Wire podcast, Jason Yetton, Westpac’s chief executive for specialist businesses, outlined that as Westpac’s BaaS offering is open banking compliant, it “puts the power of customer data back into the customers’ hands” and could help Westpac’s BaaS customers (such as Afterpay Money) offer home loans to its customers.

Mr Yetton commented: “We started with transaction and savings accounts. But the next cab off the rank would be to digitally reimagine a home buying journey and make that is really easy, digital, fast, simple, repetitive. But we want to do that in 2022.”

He suggested that as Afterpay Money has “native transaction categorization capabilities” that ensure transactions are “described and categorized in really simple, easy to understand descriptors” and can tie to open banking date, this could, in future, feed into lending products.

“It’s the underlying data that we often use in our credit decisioning that will bring lending products to bear for Afterpay and partners in the future. So that’s the really exciting element,” Mr Yetton said.

“[Our BaaS offering] is very flexible, a partner can choose what services they would like to offer and they’ll more than likely choose different services. But it’s a plug and play model. And it means that they can choose and select it when they want and how they want it in future.”