Afterpay launches new travel offer

Heather McIlvaine

18th Apr 2019

Afterpay has partnered with LayAway Travel to launch Play, a new travel booking site that enables people to split up the cost of their holiday into several interest-free instalments.

Unlike Afterpay’s original offering, Play operates a traditional layby model – that is, people need to pay the full amount before they receive the product, in this case, a holiday.

Afterpay is best known for its namesake payment app that upends the traditional layby model by letting users take home the product before they have paid in full.

Using Play, customers can pick and book a holiday package and pay for it in full in weekly or
fortnightly instalments over a 3- to 12-month period before they travel.

Andrew Paykel, managing director of LayAway Travel, which launched in Australia in 2016, said Play will offer new travel deals every week, catering for different travel tastes and budgets across relaxation, wellness, adventure, culture and party categories.

Given the extreme popularity of Afterpay – 2.3 million people were using the service at the end of FY18, according to the company’s data – and Australians’ penchant for travel, the founders have high hopes for the new site.

“It’s no secret Australians love to travel, taking over 11 million outbound international trips per year – cementing our place as one of the highest travelled nations on earth per capita,” David Hancock, group head of Afterpay, said.

“Taking the Australian passion and hunger for travel into account, what we’ve endeavoured
to do with Play is to create high quality, well thought-out packages to provide experiences
they may never have had before, but also manage payment in a way that is responsible.”

According to Hancock, Play is a direct response to customer feedback, with Afterpay’s existing
customer base having asked to be able to pay for travel experiences in the same way.

“Play is different to Afterpay as customers pay in full before they travel. However, the same
Afterpay values that people know and trust still apply, like responsible spending, no interest,
and regular, equal repayments,” he said.

“It’s great to see that throughout the current pilot program with Play, the customers involved
have given the same amazing feedback we get regularly from our Afterpay customers.”