The Flexiroam Ltd (ASX: FRX) share price was up as much as 35% today. The rise coming after the mobile network operator announced a partnership allowing it to offer Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) technology.
At the time of writing, the share price did come down from today's high of 6.9 cents. It is currently sitting at 5.8 cents per share — still up 13.73% on yesterday's close.
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What did Flexiroam announce?
In a statement to the ASX, Flexiroam announced its partnership with Singapore/Malaysian BNPL provider, Split. Flexiroam stated that Split will be offered as a BNPL option via its Flexiroam Wallet product. Customers will be able to make purchases over three interest-free instalments.
However, the offer is only for Malaysian and Singaporean Flexiroam mobile users. The product will be free to download into Flexiroam Wallet. Split will also charge a transaction fee on sales generated.
Words from the executives
Commenting on today's announcement, Flexiroam managing director, Jef Ong said:
The signing of our agreement with Split is an important development as the BNPL space is rapidly gaining traction in South East Asia…
He added:
[We] see the potential to offer further BNPL options to users outside of Malaysia and Singapore, in the future. Out of the 670 million people in South East Asia, only 27% have bank accounts, which means that there are hundreds of millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals who would require support using non-bank payment methods to purchase our products.
Split CEO, Dylan Tan, also gave his thoughts on today's announcement, stating:
We are delighted to be offering Split as a payment option on the Flexiroam Wallet and look forward to giving our userbase a budget-friendly way to buy mobile data.
The huge growth of BNPL shares on the ASX
Flexiroam's latest venture is another addition to the growing list of companies offering BNPL services. Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price has gone from $2.95 on its initial public offering (IPO) to nearly $120 at the time of writing. Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) similarly, has seen remarkable growth. The share price in the company has gone 39 cents just 5 years ago to $10.45 as of writing.
Afterpay has a market capitalisation of $34.1 billion, while Zip's is $5.8 billion.
Flexiroam share price snapshot
Today's phenomenal rise is not out of the ordinary for Flexiroam. This time last year, the Flexiroam share price was sitting at 2 cents — a 155% increase. As recently as 8 February this year, shares in the telecom company were trading for as high as 9 cents each.
Flexiroam's market capitalisation is $29 million.
