BNPL player Splitit (ASX:SPT) was unable to grow its quarterly revenues in March, its latest trading update shows.

The company booked merchant sales volume (MSV) of $US82m for the quarter, which flowed through to revenues of $US2.7m.

Those figures reflect a quarterly revenue margin of 3.2pc, well below the 7pc margin that Zip Co (ASX:Z1P) was clipping the ticket at in its March quarter numbers.

SPT’s March figures also reflect a drop from the December quarter, when it posted MSV of $US86.3m with revenues of $US2.9m.

The company attributed the decline to a “deliberate shift away from debit cards”, and said without the change in strategy it would have posted q/q growth in MSV.

Investors were looking for more as the stock fell by around five per cent in morning trade to ~80c.

At current levels, SPT is trading at a discount of more than 45pc from $1.47 — the price point at which co-founder Alon Feit sold down 13,300,000 shares in early February for a nominal take of $19,551,000.

The on-market sale meant Feit ceased to be a substantial shareholder, and came shortly after the conclusion of a two-year escrow period following Splitit’s January 2019 listing.

Elsewhere, Splitit said total merchants on its platform rose by 25 per cent q/q, while shoppers rose by 16 per cent to ~500k.

As an industry comparator, market-leader Afterpay (ASX:APT) this week reported total active customers of 14.6m, with sales volume of $5.2bn.

While SPT’s quarterly MSV declined, the $US82m in sales marked a gain of 247pc from the March quarter in 2020, when markets froze amid the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Average Order Value, whilst not considered a performance metric, continued to average over $US1,000 for the quarter and remains a key differentiator from BNPL peers,” Splitit said.

As it looks to drive top line growth, the company said its wholesale funding deal with Goldman Sachs has “doubled the size of Splitit’s funding capacity” and is expected to “improve gross margins from H2 FY21 as remaining higher-cost facilities are repaid”.

CEO Brad Paterson also flagged the company’s recent deal with China-based UnionPay as an “important partnership” for its global scale-up plans.