Black Friday -- the official one, not the excuse lots of retailers are using to offer discounts in October -- is just around the corner marking the beginning of the holiday shopping season, which led me to look at the new(ish) trend of Buy Now Pay Later.
Klarna is the leader in this space and it's had a fair share of issues this year, so when I saw its downloads didn't grow as much this year I wasn't very surprised.
The picture is very different for rival Affirm.
Downloads of Affirm, the exclusive Buy Now Pay Later of shopping king Amazon, have been on the rise for a few years now, though, 2022 was by far the best.
Since 2020, monthly downloads rose from around 200K to more than 1.2M, according to our estimates. That's 6x, and I didn't even have to use a calculator.
In terms of holiday seasons, December of 2020 saw a little under a half million new downloads. They doubled in 2021, adding nearly a million new users, and based on the last few months, I predict downloads will double again in December of 2022.
While Klarna is still in command of this market internationally, Affirm has taken over the lead in the US, the only country Affirm operates in. That's good news for Affirm and for Amazon, and not-so-good news for Klarna.
The same seven apps held the same seven download spots. Revenue told a different story, and a short-drama app from Singapore crashed the top 10.
MLB app downloads jumped 43% this February while revenue climbed to $3.5M, signaling a stronger season ahead for baseball on mobile.