Afterpay Ads Unlocks Australia’s Complete Shopping Journey with Square Integration

New unified data approach combines Square’s merchant ecosystem insights with Afterpay’s consumer behaviour data, to supercharge Australia’s first financially-led commerce media platform

DISTRIBUTED-WORK-MODEL/MELBOURNE – November 10, 2024 – Afterpay, part of Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ), today announced the integration of Square’s comprehensive merchant and transaction data into Afterpay Ads, creating Australia’s most powerful advertising platform built on real commerce data. 

By uniting Square’s vast merchant ecosystem – across hundreds of thousands of local sellers, processing millions of transactions daily – with Afterpay’s consumer insights, the integration unlocks audience intelligence across industries and demographics. The result is Australia’s only omni-channel advertising platform powered by payment data from both sides of the counter, predicting purchase intent through pre-transaction financial behaviours.

“We’re not just adding more data; we’re making it easier for businesses of all types and sizes, to reach real customers at the right moment,” said Andrew Gilbert, Afterpay Ads Lead, ANZ.  “This integration marks our evolution into a unified commerce intelligence platform that shows the complete customer journey helping brands understand why people buy, not just what they buy.”

The Payment Intelligence Platform: Where Transaction Data Meets Marketing Precision

With insights captured across more than 80 verticals and sub verticals, the Afterpay Ads offering uncovers the ‘unknown customer’ and the ‘unknown behaviours’ that traditional retail media networks miss, revealing the full spectrum of Australian shopping patterns, and making those customers known to brands.

From corner cafés to purchases from global brands, this ‘whole wallet’ view reveals the real-life moments that drive purchase decisions: the gym visit that sparks an activewear purchase, the local market shop that signals sustainable values, the coffee habit that defines a daily routine and reveals the hidden connections between unplanned purchases.

Key platform advantages include:

• Wholly unique data asset: The only omni-channel platform in Australia defining audience segments with both merchant and consumer financial data
• Predictive advantage: To show purchase intent before it becomes purchase behaviour
• Merchant Diversity: Unparalleled category breadth spanning every touchpoint in the Australian consumer journey.
• Deterministic Data Advantage: Real transaction insights, not cookies or assumptions — delivering authentic consumer behaviour data across online and in-store environments.
• Omnichannel Activation: Meeting customers at moments of highest intent across all shopping channels.
• Unknown Customer Discovery: Illuminating hidden shopping patterns that traditional retail media networks overlook.

Driving measurable results through unified intelligence

The platform connects brands to Australia’s most engaged commerce audience through a single solution that spans local businesses to national retailers, delivering reach and relevance at scale.

For brands, the integration transforms fragmented data into unified customer understanding – delivering both depth of insight and breadth of reach that drives measurable campaign performance. Every campaign benefits from these indepth insights through higher relevance, better timing, and more precise targeting that turns audience insights into business outcomes.

“As Gen Z and Millennials continue to reshape commerce with new financial habits and cross-category shopping behaviours, our insights capture these evolving patterns in real time,” Gilbert said. “This helps brands stay ahead of shifting consumer preferences with life-stage intelligence that reveals not just what customers buy, but when they’re ready to buy it to better grow their business.” 

Simple, Secure, and Scalable.

The integration enhances the Afterpay Ads portfolio, which brings together Afterpay Curate (offsite), Afterpay Media Network (offsite) and Afterpay’s Affiliate program (onsite), making deep audience insights accessible for businesses of all sizes and enabling them to launch campaigns quickly, measure return, and scale with confidence – without compromising the privacy of sensitive financial and transaction data. 

For partnership inquiries and media opportunities, please contact the Afterpay Ads team – afterpayads@block.xyz.

About Afterpay 

Afterpay is transforming the way we pay by allowing eligible shoppers to buy products immediately and pay over time – enabling simple, transparent and responsible spending. We are on a mission to power an economy in which everyone wins. Afterpay is offered by thousands of the world’s favorite retailers and used by millions of active global customers. Afterpay is currently available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom, where it is known as Clearpay. Afterpay is a wholly owned subsidiary of Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ)).

About Block, Inc.

Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ) builds technology to increase access to the global economy. Each of our brands unlocks different aspects of the economy for more people. Square makes commerce and financial services accessible to sellers. Cash App is the easy way to spend, send, and store money. Afterpay is transforming the way customers manage their spending over time. TIDAL is a music platform that empowers artists to thrive as entrepreneurs. Bitkey is a simple self-custody wallet built for bitcoin. Proto is a suite of bitcoin mining products and services. Together, we’re helping build a financial system that is open to everyone. Block.xyz