Goldman Sachs is deepening its push into financial services for the masses with a planned acquisition of GreenSky, a lender focused on home improvement. The move will allow Goldman to expand its suite of “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) offerings.

Why should we care?
Goldman, in recent years, has been building a war chest of consumer financial products through its Marcus by Goldman Sachs brand. Lending products were an initial focus for Marcus before it moved into consumer banking and investing. GreenSky’s toolset offers BNPL functions, and, according to Goldman, is “the largest fintech platform for home improvement consumer loan originations.” GreenSky – which has 4 million customers and serves a network of 10,000 merchants – went public in 2018 with a $4B valuation. The company, however, experienced difficulties stemming from loan defaults during the pandemic. “GreenSky and its talented team have built an impressive, cloud-native platform that will allow Marcus to reach a new and active set of merchants and customers and provide them with an expanding set of solutions,” Goldman CEO David Solomon said in a statement. Goldman’s plans to absorb GreenSky comes as other large financial tech firms make BNPL-related acquisitions, including Square’s $29B planned acquisition of Afterpay last month and PayPal’s $2.7B planned purchase of Japanese BNPL company Paidy.