Cruising the Payments Swingles Bar (SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE)

Plus, the gritty world of rent-to-own.

Number of the Week: $725 million (explanation below)

Cruising the Payments Swingles Bar

As holiday shopping season hits us, the whole payments space is starting to feel like a swingles bar at closing time: a lot of sudden pairings that may or may not make sense in the morning. FIN continues to think, for example, that Square’s $29 billion purchase of Australian Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) hegemon Afterpay was an extravagant indulgence.

But one player that is deadly serious is Amazon; its cost of payments is higher in the US than in any other country, and the company seems determined to fix that.