By Stuart Condie
SYDNEY–Australian credit provider Humm said it can again sign up new buy-now-pay-later customers after a local regulator revoked a temporary ban over concerns about the product’s suitability for consumers.
Humm on Monday said that it had addressed the concerns that had prompted the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to issue an interim stop order on Friday morning. The order was lifted Friday evening, Humm said.
The order, part of an industry wide review by ASIC, centered on concerns over Humm’s BNPL target-market determination. The determination is a mandatory document that relates to a product’s target market and conditions on how the product can be distributed.
Australia’s federal government last week said that buy-now-pay-later services, which surged in popularity in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic as online shopping grew in popularity, will be regulated in the same way as traditional credit providers in an attempt to address worries that some consumers are taking on too much debt.
Humm last week said that it supported the regulation.
Write to Stuart Condie at stuart.condie@wsj.com
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