The Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price has returned to form on Wednesday.
In morning trade, the payments company's shares are up 9% to $116.74.
Why is the Afterpay share price charging higher?
There have been a couple of catalysts for the strong gain by the Afterpay share price on Wednesday.
The first is a very strong performance by US tech stocks overnight after bond yields pulled back.
This led to the tech-heavy Nasdaq index having its best day in four months. It recorded a sizeable 3.6% gain after investors took advantage of recent weakness to snap up tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, and Tesla. In addition to this, rival buy now pay later provider Affirm saw its shares jump 7% overnight.
What else is supporting Afterpay's shares?
Also giving the Afterpay share price a lift today was an update on its European expansion.
According to the release, the company has completed its acquisition of Pagantis SAU and PMT Technology.
With the acquisitions now complete, Afterpay advised that it will progress with the launch of its Clearpay services in Europe.
The first countries that Afterpay plans to go live with are Spain, France, and Italy. These countries combined have an addressable ecommerce market that exceeds 150 billion euros.
Commenting on the expansion into Europe last year, Co-CEO Anthony Eisen was very positive on the company's prospects in the region.
He said: "Our momentum to date has given us the confidence to expedite our expansion into new global regions. Entering into such internationally relevant markets like the US and the UK and seeing our growth outpace what we experienced in our more mature Australian market, validates the appeal of our product on a global scale."
"Acquiring Pagantis provides us with the necessary regulatory licencing, resourcing and infrastructure to expedite the launch of Afterpay into key countries in Southern Europe and beyond. The new markets we will be entering will provide our global retailers with the opportunity to offer Afterpay in more regions and for us to provide a whole new customer base with access to our differentiated and customer centric model."
