---
title: "Block → Afterpay"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/block-buy-afterpay-2021"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2021"
author: "Ihor Vlasov"
reviewed: "2026-09-20"
---

# Block → Afterpay

The largest buy-now-pay-later acquisition on record and the biggest takeover in Australian history at announcement: an all-stock deal worth $29bn in August 2021 that had fallen to about $13.9bn by the time it completed in January 2022.

The largest buy-now-pay-later deal on record; the all-stock consideration had fallen to about $13.9bn by completion.

- **Acquirer:** Block (United States)
- **Target:** Afterpay (Australia)
- **Value:** $29B
- **Announced:** August 2021
- **Completed:** January 2022
- **Sector:** Fintech
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

Block — then still called Square — ran a merchant payments business and the Cash App consumer wallet, and wanted to connect the two. Afterpay had 16 million consumers who paid in four instalments and 100,000 merchants who paid Afterpay a fee to offer it; putting Afterpay in Cash App and in Square's checkout was meant to make Block the network between its own two sides. The price, at about 40 times Afterpay's revenue, was paid in Block shares at the top of the 2021 fintech market, which is why the headline value moved so far before completion: Block's shares fell by more than half between announcement and closing, and the sellers received the same number of shares worth less than half as much.

The deal was the peak of buy-now-pay-later as an M&A category. Klarna, Affirm and Zip were valued on the same growth; within a year rising interest rates had raised their funding costs, regulators in the UK, Australia and the US had moved to bring the product under credit rules, and the multiples had gone.

## What it left behind

Afterpay became a feature inside Cash App and Square rather than a business of its own, which was the plan. Whether it was worth 40 times revenue is answered by Block's own share price. For sellers the lesson is about all-stock consideration in a hot market: an offer denominated in the buyer's shares is a bet on the buyer, and the sellers here made it at the wrong moment.

— Ihor Vlasov, M&A FinTech Expert. Last reviewed 2026-09-20. https://mahouse.world/authors/ihor-vlasov