Meet Nick Molnar: The man behind Afterpay’s buy now, pay later platform, who sold it for $29 billion

Afterpay co-founder Nick Molnar didn’t always know he was destined to become one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs, in fact, for a while, he tried to avoid that path altogether, as per a report.

Nick Molnar's Unlikely Path from Jewelry Sales to Fintech Giant

Growing up in Sydney, Molnar was surrounded by business, his parents ran a jewelry store, and he learned early on what it meant to trade and work in retail, which gave him an early interest in entrepreneurship, according to a CNBC report.

The 35-year-old told CNBC, “My parents being retail entrepreneurs always taught me the intricacies of how to trade, how to run in retail,” adding, “So I do really feel retail is in my blood,” as quoted in the report.


As a teenager, he started selling jewelry from his family’s business online, first on eBay, then through a dedicated website, according to the report. But despite that early success, Molnar wasn’t convinced that building businesses was the right long-term plan, as per the CNBC report.

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He said, “The universe told me that I should get a finance job given my commerce degree, my business degree, and so I really tried to make that a reality,” as quoted in the report.

That plan hit a strange snag, because recruiters kept pointing to the very thing he thought might hold him back: his jewelry business, according to the CNBC report. Molnar said that when he would apply for investment banking jobs and companies would see his jewelry business listed on his CV, they would ask why he would bother doing anything else, as reported by CNBC.

Molnar shared that, “They’d say, ‘Well, but why are you coming to get a job? You have a great business,’” adding, “It’s like this weird paradigm that the world told me to get a job. But actually the truth was, I should have been an entrepreneur, but I got the job,” as quoted in the report.

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A Push from Venture Capital Sparks a Turning Point

However, in 2011, Molnar joined the Australian venture capital firm M.H. Carnegie & Co, but instead of pushing him toward a corporate career, his boss, Mark Carnegie, encouraged the opposite, as per the CNBC report.

Carnegie would ask Molnar every morning how much jewelry he had sold, according to the report. At the time, Molnar’s online business was generating more than 2 million Australian dollars a year, as per the CNBC report. One day, Carnegie asked him a simple question, asking what he would do if he gave him a million dollars to grow his jewelry business, according to the report.

Molnar revealed that, “He really pushed me to be an entrepreneur,” and added that, “He basically said to me, ‘Look, I think you’re wasted right now being at my company. I will save your job for a year to give you the confidence to go and be an entrepreneur, but you will never come back,’” as quoted in the CNBC report.

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Afterpay’s Rise and Sold For $29 Billion

In 2012, he left the firm to focus on his business full-time, then Molnar soon teamed up with his neighbor, Anthony Eisen, as per the report. In 2014, they launched 'Afterpay', a buy now, pay later platform, a concept that was rare and unheard of in Australia at the time, according to the CNBC report.

It wasn’t a guaranteed win, and Molnar said many people warned him that the success rate for new businesses is “really low,” as quoted in the report. He explained that buy now, pay later lenders are now fairly ubiquitous in retail, but back in 2014 they were rare, and virtually nonexistent in Australia, so Afterpay had to sell consumers on a new way to shop and spend, as reported by CNBC.

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Molnar shared that, “I knew millennials needed another option,” adding, “Credit cards were not going to be the way they wanted to manage their spending, and each time I shared the vision and opportunity with people, I was more and more convinced that we had to bring the idea to life,” as quoted in the report.

He also revealed that, it took Carnegie’s challenge and assurance for Molnar to take the leap, saying, “Even though I feel like an entrepreneur through and through...it took the right people to give me the confidence,” as quoted by CNBC.

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Molnar also highlighted that, “I had nothing telling me ‘no,’ I had no past that was giving me muscle memory to say that like this shouldn’t work,” adding, “I think you make the wrong decision sometimes when you stop trusting your intuition — when you’re swayed by moments in your life and your journey, that probably wouldn’t have swayed you before,” as quoted in the report.

However, only seven years after the firm was launched, in August 2021, Afterpay was acquired by Jack Dorsey’s fintech services company, Square, which was then rebranded to Block, as reported by CNBC. Block had bought Afterpay for $29 billion, as per the report.

FAQs

Who is Nick Molnar?
Nick Molnar is an Australian entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Afterpay, a buy now, pay later platform, as per the CNBC report.

How did Afterpay start?
Nick teamed up with his neighbor, Anthony Eisen, and together they launched Afterpay in 2014, as per the CNBC report.