The BNPL market exploded in the past year as homebound consumers used the services to borrow and spend online during the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting big players PayPal Holdings, Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc into the sector.

The Melbourne, Australia-based payments firm said on Thursday it will use the funding on marketing and partnerships, as it competes with bigger rivals Afterpay and Zip Co's Quadpay to capture the BNPL space in the United States.

"We will begin distributing BNPL in large volumes through major ecosystem partnerships like payments processors, and merchant aggregators requiring significant funding," said Brian Shniderman, Openpay's U.S. chief executive officer.

Openpay posted a record increase in its active merchants in fiscal 2021, while active customers jumped nearly 70% to 541,000 at the end of August. (https://bit.ly/3BxJkXr)

(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)