Over 60,000 new customers a month – the incredible growth of PayJustNow

PayJustNow adds between 60,000 and 100,000 new customers every month and is set to continue its impressive growth trajectory after doubling its users in 2023. 

This was revealed by PayJustNow CEO Craig Newborn, who spoke to Daily Investor following the release of its results this week.

PayJustNow is a subsidiary of Homechoice International, which is listed on the JSE.

Homechoice was founded 38 years ago as a home shopping channel but today it also offers financial services through Weaver Fintech.

This includes personal lending, value-added services, and insurance products available on digital platforms like PayJustNow. 

PayJustNow offers a buy now pay later service (BNPL) in South Africa and is used by over 2,500 merchants across the country. 

It is currently the largest BNPL service provider in South Africa, with 1.3 million customers as of the end of 2023 and R1.5 billion worth of merchandise bought through its platform. 

This growth is even more impressive when considering the company began operating four years ago. 

However, it has no plans to slow its growth, and the company’s CEO expects a repeat of its strong results at the end of 2024. 

Newborn said PayJustNow has plenty of room for growth and aims for a larger slice of the 25 million South Africans who are credit active. 

The growth rate will naturally slow over time, and the company is, therefore, also planning to improve its customer mix soon. 

He said the company has managed to keep its non-paying customers below 2% by implementing a behavioural scorecard to process approvals. 

PayJustNow, in contrast to its direct competitors, also gets customers to pay one-third of the price at checkout. Newborn said this provides a good entry barrier to its service, filtering out a large number of potential non-paying customers. 

As shown in the graph below, this has enabled the company to grow rapidly without a corresponding rise in non-paying customers. 

Newborn also explained the company’s interesting business model, which allows it to charge no fees and interest on payments. 

The company only charges fees when payments are over 24 hours late based on the customer’s chosen payment date. 

The company makes very little money from these fees, which Newborn said are not even enough to cover the cash lost from its non-paying customers.

Therefore, most of PayJustNow’s income is generated by fees paid by the merchants who use its service to facilitate transactions and monthly payments.

Newborn said the company has ambitious plans to leverage this relationship with merchants to drive higher-quality earnings for the company. 

In particular, PayJustNow aims to increase the number of referrals from its search and discover service to its merchants. These referrals totalled 27.3 million in 2023.