Transactions were up 293%. What we're seeing there really is product innovation, engagement, and adding more and more great merchants to our platform. Revenue and cash gross profit were up around 150%, on a pro forma basis, that's actually around 100%. That's as we invest in growth. On the next slide, a quick summary. We printed a really good cash transaction margin of circa 3.5%. We did see a slight reduction year-over-year, as these figures now include the U.S., which only got consolidated this year, and also more every day in Australia, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. When you look at the capital recycling, that bottom chart, you can see there, really great improvement, about 40% improvement, as the loan book has dropped from about 6.5 to 3.9 months.
Losses, relatively flat year on year, when you look at it as a function of transaction volume, even as we've entered new markets. Just on the next slide, as we set out at the beginning of FY 2021, we set aside four key strategic areas for the business, driving payment acceptance, app engagement, global expansion, and Zip Business, which we kicked off in Australia. There's a lot here which obviously, you can read, but I'd like to highlight a few things on this page. In terms of payment acceptance, really the innovation of being able to use Zip everywhere has been a real game changer, and we'll talk about that, whether it's the virtual card and Chrome extension in the U.S. or our virtual card technology in Australia.
The app is very much the centerpiece of the relationship between us and customer, and we do see payments as the access point between us and customers. Again, here, really pleasing to see some of the stats here around number of app downloads, and we'll go into detail with some of the engagement metrics. The other good news, we've obviously had Pocketbook sitting there powering a lot of our underwriting and decisioning technology. The good news is that Pocketbook functionality, personal financial management functionality, is currently being integrated into the Zip app. We are incredibly excited about that, and it really talks to our purpose. Global has been a standout, and we'll be talking about that a little bit later.
Before the year began, U.S. didn't exist, QuadPay didn't exist, and that's obviously been a great standout, huge effort by the team, and might I say, all built through relationships, because we have been under COVID the last year. We'll jump into Zip Business, which you're starting to see some really, really good progress. If we just move to the next slide. Quick overview. We'll do an overview of the business for those new to the story, a recap of FY 2021. We'll then do a deep dive on the U.S. and Australia and New Zealand, which are obviously our core markets. We'll talk about our global expansion, which is obviously key to our future. Then I'll hand over to Pete and Martin, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, to talk through some of the financials, and then we'll finish off with the FY 2022 outlook.
As we move to the next slide. We've just undergone a big rebrand, and if you don't mind, I'd just like to spend a one or two just talking about this. Six months ago, we embarked on a pretty big project, and that was really to look at who we are, our why, what we stand for. We conducted thousands of surveys, countless interviews with Zipsters and also many, many customers. Our view is that great product drives customers, but great purpose drives great product. When we looked around us, the finance category has spent decades and millions telling us we can, while the tech category has given us all the ability to get it now, live in the now. Our view is that the truth is that no one can live in the moment if they are not in control of their future.
At Zip, we believe we have the opportunity to really rebalance the power in payments by putting people at the center, and the new logo literally has that middle section to put people at the center, and by building fair and transparent products that generate new value for all. Our belief is that when you give people knowledge, access, and the ability to control their financial lives, you give people the ability to live every day with confidence. That really brings us to our new purpose. The mission has remained the same, and that is to create a world where people can live fearlessly today knowing that they're in control of tomorrow. Being able to buy now as long as you can pay later.
What that really means is that when customers select Zip at checkout, they go, "Zip's got my back." What you'll start to see as well is that really permeates across our product strategy. It's brought us to where we are today, that strong sense of responsibility and doing the right thing in fintech. If we move to slide eight, which really talks to our model, really, we're trying to bring customers and merchants together through this fair and valuable payments experience. If we start on the right, our first customer was the merchant. It was Chappelli Cycles in Australia, who brought us our first consumer. So for merchants, we're doing payment acceptance. We're driving new customers to our merchants, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, and we're driving conversion for them.
The other great thing is this year we've actually started to provide other solutions that can really help them grow working capital and buy now, pay later. For consumers, we offer a range of really exciting services. Not just buy now, pay later. We also offer consumer finance and longer duration installments. Of course, lots of wallet features, bills, gift cards, subscriptions, promotions from our merchants. Budgeting and learning is obviously coming now as well. That's really how we see our flywheel. On the next slide, I just want to talk through how we see ourselves relative to the peer set and what we're going to be focused on as we drive our global strategy. Really five pieces to it.
First of all, when you zip a transaction, that means you can spread it into installments, and that's both short and long duration in a single experience. Australia, we obviously have that both short and long. In the other markets, currently pay in full, but we will be looking to roll out pay in the different markets. The second pillar to our business is we have this hybrid open and also integrated network. Which, as you'll see in the statistics, really drives frequency and preference and means that you can, with Zip, buy now, pay later, anything, everywhere. A big differentiator. The third is the business model, being able to generate revenue both from merchants and customers, and that those customer fees are fair, transparent, and easy to understand.
This is really helping us penetrate many verticals with a range of different gross product margins, and still maintain really strong unit economics, not just in Australia, but here in the U.S. is a big standout. Risk management is a huge focus, and really driving conversion at checkout, but still maintaining really healthy receivables management program. I think finally, we really want to be the Stripe of buy now, pay later. Integrate once and unlock many markets. This is really starting to yield fruit. Today, you can integrate once, and we can open up 12 markets for a single API integration. Moving to slide 10. Really some great numbers here for FY 2021. AUD 5.8 billion of transaction volume, generating AUD 403 million of revenue. We're now well north of 7 million customers, 50,000 merchants, and we have about 1,000 staff now across the group.
Pleasingly, when I look at this map of the world, pre-COVID, we were in two markets, and today we are in 12 markets, and we are truly on our way to becoming a global payments company. Still a long way to go. We still now need to mature in many of these markets. Directionally, very strong. How we've gone to market globally has been the coalition of founders. That's really helped drive trust and hunger in the businesses. We see these places really as beachheads for regional expansion and organic expansion. If we move to the next slide. Really, as many of these logos when we did our original investor decks, we would've been very excited to have. We're really building strong relationships that started in Australia, but that are now increasingly moving across the world with big tech, big fashion marketplaces.
Strength, really, I'd say, in marketplaces, consumer electronics, and the home. Just on the next slide. If you just move one more. I think we've spoken about the brand. We have progressed an enormous amount in the last 12 months. A big shout-out to our entire team, if I contrast to where we were a year ago, in terms of investment in our people, but also the community. Firstly, for employees, we rolled out a mental well-being program and partnered with a group called Heart On My Sleeve, which is a dynamic not-for-profit organization led by the inspiring Mitch Wallis to really reshape the conversation in the workplace. I think just given the circumstances that many are working under, even more important. We also, given the heightened environment with COVID and more generally, now provide 10 days leave for family and domestic violence.
Of course, as you read in the press, earlier in the year, we rolled out the world's first miscarriage bereavement leave. That people feel really they can be themselves when they come to work at Zip. We've also now established global DEI communities within the company in Australia, U.S., and the U.K. to really focus on strategies around awareness and education as it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. A lot is happening in the business. We've also partnered with The Pinnacle Foundation, Women Who Code. In the U.S., we've partnered with Aspiritech, which provides training for QA services for those on the autism spectrum. A lot has happened for our staff. As I said, will be our competitive advantage. For customers, we delivered campaigns to help improve financial literacy, focusing in the U.S. in particular during Pride Month and also Financial Well-being Month.
In Australia, we initiated a partnership with Young Change Agents, which is a non-profit that is building financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills for the next generation, which is a really exciting group. Finally, for the community and for the environment, we worked with Powershop to switch 100% GreenPower at our Sydney HQ, and we adopted a supply code of conduct and human rights statements, which really reflects our commitment to upholding high ethical standards that support our people, communities, and the environment. Really a lot here, and really pleased that we've been able to build a lot more muscle around this in the organization as we scale. Just on to the next slide. We'll now move to a recap of FY 2021. Many of these points I have covered already, so I'll just draw attention to a few in particular.
In terms of the growth, we are a growth company. It's how we've been since day one, we've seen really pleasing numbers year-over-year. TTV and revenue up 150% +. We've done that while also maintaining really strong unit economics, that 3% + in cash transaction margin. What this has done, has generated close to AUD 200 million in gross profit, a real big step up from last year, and operating cash flow of AUD 44 million. We did generate an EBITDA loss of AUD 23 million, which Martin and Pete will go into a little bit later, but a good result considering the investment in offshore. Largely the U.S. growth, which we believe has delivered in spades and has got a lot longer further to grow. The other big call-out is on our funding.
Big improvements in our cost of capital, working with Goldman Sachs over here in the U.S. as the book matures, but also the public market issuance that Pete and Martin have led, and will go into shortly. Finally, innovation in payments. Whichever market we have been in, we have been first with a range of innovations, whether it's virtual card in Australia, virtual card in the U.S., Chrome, and we've really seen a big step up there. Interestingly, even though we have 50,000 integrated merchants, our customers have shopped at over 500,000 unique merchants, both online and in store. I think it's connecting these two together that's really going to be the secret sauce for us in the coming years. If we just move to the next slide. 16. We'll just do a deeper dive in the unit economics.
As I said earlier, if we look at the revenue, and we've used these drivers, given our business is quite large, we wanted to shift to some simple to understand drivers for Pete to model the business. If we look at transaction volume and we look at the key metrics to gross profit, and then Martin and team will look at it a little bit below. What we've seen here is revenue margin has moved from 7.6% to 7%. Really healthy number, although has come down. What's driving that are really two things. One has been the shift towards the U.S., but also our exposure to everyday spend in Australia, which has actually generated some really healthy frequency numbers, which we'll talk about shortly. Even though we've seen a slight deterioration there, customers are spending more with us per month in the region.
On the cash cost of sales, we've been able to reduce the percent of TTV by about 300 basis points, largely driven by our cost of funds. That's really generated a 3.5% cash transaction margin, or about a 50% gross profit margin. If you look at Australia, really as a case in point, we can see there that after 12 consecutive quarters of positive cash flow, we are starting to see the operating leverage come through as we invest for growth below the GP line. The second piece of the value equation on the next slide is really around is how the capital moves and the capital frequency.
Here, you can see on the chart on the left, over the last 12 months, a real big shift in the business, from peaking at 6.3 x the book recycle on average down to about 3 x- 4x, which has obviously improved our revenue yield. Our revenue divided by average receivables. If you look at the cash transaction margin and our velocity, our gross profit as a function of the book is really starting to look a lot healthier. Why? It's really the shift towards the U.S. and increasing the rest of the globe with the shorter duration installments. As the U.S. becomes more of a dominant contributor to our overall transaction volume and revenue, we do expect the revenue yield and the repayment velocity to improve further.
I think finally, on the next slide, if we look at our credit and risk, really performed well. I think if we look back a year ago at the outset of COVID, we were staring really into an uncertain future, both on the consumption side around how customers would spend, but also on the credit side. I think it's been pleasing to see that we've been able to keep the net bad debts as a function of transaction volume really flat year-over-year. What's driving that is huge investments in our decision technology, machine learning models, particularly over in the U.S. as well. This increasing share of existing customers is also really driving the credit behavior. We see that repeat customers are 50% less likely to go bad than first time.
Really important that we continue to see that curve head north. If we just move now to the next section. We will now talk about the U.S. On the next slide, our U.S. business has really been a standout when you look at these charts. I would like to congratulate and thank our joint U.S. CEOs, Adam Ezra and Brad Lindenberg, for their leadership, innovation, and the results. I think it's a big part of the secret sauce that we have, having founders and that founder-led mindset really driving the business. I am actually in the States at the moment, currently joining the team in Australia, but it's great to see what is happening here. We've seen tremendous growth in the U.S. business. The last 12 months really driven by, I think, a couple of things.
The network effect of our marketplace, as well as the overall acceleration of e-commerce in the COVID world. Our U.S. business was really positioned well going into COVID because of the anywhere product. That really allowed us to capture our proportionate share of spend because of the innovative construct and the ability to be used everywhere. The numbers, really strong, $2.6 billion for the year-end transaction volume. Customers up to 4.4 million. Revenue of $192 million, and really strong app downloads at 5.2. We also saw during the half the U.S. overtake Australia, and that's obviously before the run-up in the foreign exchange price. Phenomenal growth, 100%-200%, and really led by the app. I would say as well, they've done this while maintaining really strong cash transaction margins, well north of 2%.
We also saw monthly spend per average customer jump quite significantly to about $210 per month. If we can keep increasing the frequency and amount, the economics should continue to look very, very good. If we just move to the next slide. Really this talks to what we have over here in the U.S. The flywheel has accelerated in FY 2021, with integrated merchants really benefiting from the app user growth and also vice versa. Some of the stats, 2/3 of customers are acquired at checkout from our integrated merchants, then moving to the app. App customers are transacting twice as much as just pure checkout customers. It's how we actually use these two things together that really makes this model work incredibly well. It also allows us to use the virtual card data to go back to merchants and drive sales, drive integration strategies.
I'm seeing a lot of that over here in Australia, sorry, over here in the U.S., which is driving a really healthy pipeline. Just on the next slide. We've seen huge growth across all channels. What this does is really drive leads to our merchants. Our unique product suite allows customers to enter the Zip ecosystem wherever they shop. It could be at checkout, could be downloading an app and using it everywhere in store, using it everywhere online, and also we rolled out a Chrome extension. As you can see with the stats here, year-over-year, really strong growth across all of these channels. Just on the next slide. Yeah.
Really, I think what we've seen across the industry, and particularly investment going into the industry, is that the buy now, pay later customer and the LTV of the buy now, pay later customer is growing, but also the long-term value that people believe is there. Of course, as proprietors, we genuinely believe that. If we look at the chart on the right, pleasingly, we are seeing older cohorts now transacting, we just use the example of the September 2019, transacting about 29 times a year. We're also seeing the steepening of the curve. Those customers that are coming into this ecosystem from checkout into the app are coming into an app that is well-oiled, has a much broader merchant set with promotions, deals, and other personalization benefits. That steepening is really pleasing to see.
30% of the customers that we do acquire through the app are also moving into our integrated network. This idea of being able to use both sides of the ecosystem is really benefiting both sides. We believe this engagement will only continue from here as we innovate around rewards, loyalty, but also CRM. A lot of work going into CRM, a lot of value that we believe is still on the table. Next. Finally, really excited about the region over here. I've come over for a few months to work with the team around product management, around growth, and also strategic partnerships. We've added quite a few good names to the merchant list. Recently names like Shein, Revolve, Polaris. The team and the pipeline is looking very, very exciting.
I think a lot of the M&A news that we've seen in the industry is really bringing the future forward across all stakeholder groups. Whether it's financial services, whether it's marketplaces, enterprise, everyone's really trying to understand the buy now, pay later space and access the customer. I think with the technology, the innovation, and the team here, which is truly a wonderful team, we think we're incredibly well-placed to really get our fair share. We've also got a range of partnerships here, with Stripe, Fiserv and Adyen, that are really helping inject us into the payments conversation. I think, as we've spoken today, a real differentiated proposition. An ability to leverage a much more engaged customer, utilizing product and tech to win business, an ability to charge, a mix of merchant, but also customer fees, allowing us to penetrate a much broader merchant and category set.
Now moving on to Australia. Next slide. We've been in Australia since 2013, listing in 2015, and have really shown strong growth results year-over-year. What we're starting to see now is really that operating leverage come through the business, and a proven model that we can also export globally. Transaction volume was up just over 50% to AUD 3.2 billion. Customers grew 33% to 2.8 million customers, 14 million. Now, with the customer growth, we did see as well good growth in what we focus internally, the monthly transacting user, which is, end of the year, just below a million. Pleasingly, with the introduction of our Tap & Zip technology and in-store go-to-market, we've seen a real step up in engagement, where the transactions per monthly transacting user up about 90% year-over-year. We'll look at the data in a second.
Some extra data points around that really has been groceries and fuel and service stations really jumping up significantly. Also, the investment in our payments technology, we are starting to export globally as well. The guys have built a really great system. If we move to the next slide. The app continues to be a source of engagement, and our mission is to be the first payment choice everywhere and every day. Transactions in FY 2021 were up around 153%. Now, I spoke earlier, late in 2020, we became a principal issuer Visa, and we introduced Tap & Zip. That have really changed the game for us, in terms of engagement and in terms of the stats. The other big move is we've sent 53 million leads to our merchants over the last 12 months active user and a daily active user.
We also rolled out a range of new wallet features, subscriptions, using our payments and virtual card technology so we can drive that monthly transacting user. We also are piloting Pay Now. Many customers don't want credit or aren't eligible for credit, and they can now Pay Now . We see there's a really interesting opportunity for us and an ability to access a new segment of the market. On slide 28, what you can really see here are probably two points I'd like to comment. Really for us, introducing customers into the app and then getting them to take another product is really important. The chart on the left, you can see there's been a 2.8 jump over the last three years in Zip Pay customers who might be coming for the everyday wallet, looking to use the Zip Money product for the longer-term installments.
We see that blend really, really important to driving LTV and driving engagement through the app. The big call-out as we talk about Tap & Zip has been the cohorts. These lines are showing 12 months view of the different cohorts, and when they adopted Tap & Zip. That ability to use us in-store and really be front of mind to be that first payment choice is starting to yield fruit. You can see here the cohorts that adopted Tap & Zip in October last year have transacted 72 times in the last 12 months. Those that adopted in December have transacted 43 times. If we become important to our customers, if they use us more and more, we can generate more LTV, more benefit for our merchants. Really, really exciting. Just moving on to the next slide, just to wrap up.
We'll just move one more. Zip Business. Zip Business really became a business during COVID, which really allowed us to start with a fresh and clean canvas. Great team, that have really been working on serving what we see as the underserved merchant population. Merchants can connect to payments, but now they can also become a buy now, pay later customer and access working capital. We want to democratize access, really, to not just consumers, but also small business. The last quarter of this year, it really came together. We saw a really strong growth, 100% growth quarter-on-quarter, led by our product set. We have Trade and Trade Plus, which really allows merchants, contractors, proprietors to really use it for their everyday needs. We're seeing early stats are showing about 2.7 transactions per user per month at an AOV about AUD 2,000, which is what we expected.
Pleasingly, starting to build really deep relationships with brands like Facebook, eBay, and Tradelink. We think we've got a long, long way to go here. If we can be all things to merchants, then we become important to them. It's not just pushing Zip at checkout, it's then using the wallets, then transact across our network. We've brought that in-store recently, and we're expecting to continue to push this business. Really as a pilot, and when we prove it in Australia, we see huge benefits globally. Now, we'll spend the last five minutes talking about global, which you've seen a range of investments, acquisitions, and we'd like to spend a bit of time just talking about the strategy. Next. Buy now, pay later is obviously a very noisy and exciting industry, but still incredibly early.
Only 2% of e-commerce spend is going through buy now, pay later rails. Things are going to accelerate very quickly from here as more and more businesses, marketplaces, customers really come to the well. Within the next four years, it's estimated that buy now, pay later will be close to AUD 1 trillion. Next. We really want to be the global buy now, pay later proposition. This idea that merchants can integrate once or platforms or ecosystems and access our buy now, pay later technology. We've seen that in core markets, there is strong and really demand, but also hearing it from our merchants, platform and technology partners that this is needed everywhere.
We internally have a genuine belief that everyone should have access to affordable credit, not just in the developed world, but also in the developing and emerging economies, which, the next four to five years will accelerate quickly. We also believe that Zip is very well-placed to be a global player here, and one of very few that can really bring this to life for a range of reasons. Number one, our technology platform. As we've proven, our ability to move into new markets at very light incremental cost has been a real bonus. A big reason why we acquired QuadPay stocks. This ability to use a single technology platform that gets smarter and smarter over time. Our approach to global has been a coalition of founders.
Founder-led mindsets who understand the local markets and understand how to play and also how to win. You need potentially different toolkits to win. Our decisioning technology, the ability to start in the market, models to train, models to learn and prove that we can get on top of the credit losses, is a proven and strong point in our business. We've established a dedicated new markets team of about 50 people that really understand all aspects of this regulation, licensing, the tools. All of these elements together and the track record that we have with teams really gives us the confidence that we can do this and capitalize on this emerging trend globally. Just on the next slide. I'll just race through the next few. Our core markets are the Americas, U.K., and the ANZ region. Doing really well, a long one here.
Our movement to Canada and Mexico has been at a very small cost, really just paying a few sales and marketing, leveraging the technology in the U.S. We see a lot of opportunity across the Americas here. Pipeline is looking super exciting in these regions, particularly in Mexico. We are also just on the next slide. The U.K. for us really jumped onto the scoreboard this year. I would like to say thanks to Anthony Drury, our leader over in the U.K. Last year, obviously, we kind of mothballed the U.K. We have now brought it back to life, really showing strong growth early on. Our playbook here involves a few things. One is leveraging global merchants, and you can see a few brands on here that have really been as a result of our ability to integrate once, open up multiple markets.
We're also looking at FCA application right now, so that we can extend our product set and also our commercial model, so that we can play in a much wider vertical set and also generate the right economic return. We're hoping that will come shortly. We've got a range of very exciting strategic partnerships that we believe that we can bring to bear. Still, we are very excited about the U.K. We probably are starting one year later than we had expected, for obvious reasons, but really excited about what we see there. On the next slide. If we just move to the next slide. We are making small selective bets in the emerging markets, where we do see large payoff, but over many years.
We fondly remember when we started Zip, actually reading the book Muhammad Yunus's "Banker to the Poor." Over here, we've made a series of regional plays, with Michal in Twisto in Central and Eastern Europe, with Anuscha and Ziyaad in the Middle East with Spotii, and with Casper in Asia-Pac. What we're doing here is getting to know the team, making a small investment, them proving to us that they are aligned to our mission and North Star. Leveraging our knowhow, our expertise, our pipeline, and really starting to see the fruits of that payoff. Then we tend to consolidate.
That provides us a regional hub to then move across, for example, from Central and Eastern Europe into Western Europe, which is a market of about AUD 1 trillion, larger than the U.S., where we can enter at a very low cost, leveraging global partnerships, global relationships, and our brand. We're also today, just on the next slide, announcing the full acquisition of Payflex, which again, has followed a similar model. Since we made our first investment in October 2019, it's up about 80 times. Again, following the path here. I think we'll just skip to the next slide. I'll hand over to Martin and Pete. This really shows how we approach small bets, understanding the team, and validating that, and then consolidating and joining our platform. It's small bets, and we are continuing to invest in our core markets, which we believe will drive short-term enterprise value.
With that, I'd like to hand over to Peter Gray and Martin Brooke.
Thanks, Larry. Just talking to segment financials on slide 41. Investment has been made to support our strategic initiatives, as Larry sort of touched on, which really do reflect our investment for growth and global expansion. I think there's been some commentary around some of the cash EBITDA number of the modest loss of AUD 22.9. We really are investing for growth in a broad footprint across the planet in multiple jurisdictions. Might not necessarily have been understood in terms of this global ambition. That's a reflection in that number. Cash gross profit remains really healthy at circa 50%. What that's demonstrating in markets like Australia, where we are continuing to grow strongly but are in a more mature state with strong unit economics, we are starting to generate very strong cash returns.
We expect that to continue as we continue to scale and look forward to increasing that number in the next year or two. As I touched on with regards to the investments, and as what Larry also touched on, some of the investments in global deliver returns over the medium term. What we can already see is the significant impact that these investments are making with regard to the contribution to group revenue. 46% of the revenue from the last financial year was made outside of Australia. Largely speaking, that was the U.S., and that will continue to increase, going forward, as the investments globally pay off and the U.S. continues to scale. As Larry touched on, Zip Business was formally launched during the year, and we're well-placed to capitalize and build momentum in that aspect of our business.
Talking to slide 42, obviously the addition of Quad has had a material impact on both our income statement and balance sheet. Revenue margins remain very strong with our differentiated revenue model really continuing to pay off and has us well positioned for any competitive outcome. Cash transaction margin remains strong at 49%, at revenue and 3.5% of underlying transaction volumes. I think looking ahead, the interest margin will reduce on our core U.S. and Australian debt facilities following the renegotiation of the Goldman Sachs facility in the U.S., which will result in a significantly reduced rate of cost of capital and the improved rating on our notes issued into the local debt markets will deliver a lower average WACC in Australia with the notes recently receiving a AA A rating. Working very closely with our payment processing partners to reduce our processing costs.
I think largely speaking, the increase in banking and processing costs were from the U.S. business, where processing costs are markedly higher than Australia. We're well placed to significantly reduce this now as we increase our scale and look at alternate methods of processing repayments outside of scheme rails, which will see a significant upside for us in our ability to reduce this cost. Actual net bad debts written off are a reflection of our risk appetite as we balance our risk and revenue in driving growth across our geographies. Typically, write-off costs are higher at early stage of each market entry. One of the benefits of our model is loss outcomes significantly improve over time, with market maturity, refinement of scorecard, and as Larry touched on, an increasing penetration of transactions made by known and existing good customers.
In terms of people costs, we've grown our team to over 1,000 full-time equivalents and will continue to invest in hiring and developing the team to deliver growth in existing and future markets. Ahead of the curve with regards to that investment. Measured as a percentage of volumes, salaries and employer-related costs are about 1.7%, and that's down from 2.1% previous year. Marketing costs have increased to about 1.2% of underlying volumes. It's critical piece of the business model, and we'll continue to invest in marketing in the short to medium term, particularly as we enter and scale in new markets. We have also rebranded, so there will be a critical piece of marketing support that is required to support that initiative.
I guess the call-out also, as Larry touched on, we're significantly increasing lifetime value for customers that are the outputs of these marketing initiatives. Further spend at this stage of market maturity is more than justified and supports our growth strategy. IT and other costs have fallen from 1.1% of transaction volumes to just under 0.9%. With regards to the provision for expected credit losses, that's increased to 5%. This is much higher than our actuals, which is about 3.5%. Largely speaking, this increase in provision is a result of an increasing component of our revenues and transactions being driven from the U.S. and the buy now, pay later, Pay-in-4 product. Typically, the provision in Australia has not really moved. The Pay-in-4 product requires a higher provision given the way that product operates.
Again, this increased provision is really driven by that. Just moving to slide 43 in terms of cash transaction margin. Again, breaking down the cash transaction margin, we continue to deliver very strong revenue as a percentage of TTV or underlying sales. Our interest expense has fallen as our capital now recycles significantly for the U.S. facility and our AAA rating continue to deliver savings as I touched on. A big call-out is that our debts have remained constant year-on-year at 1.3% of transaction volumes.
This is a great result and testament to our underwriting model with entry markets and economic challenges such as COVID has delivered is a great outcome. Obviously, as we touched on in the previous slide, you can see the impact of prices and costs in the U.S., leveraging volumes going forward to deliver significant upside with regard to that line item. I'll just hand over to Martin quickly to walk us through the next couple of slides.
Thanks, Pete. Looking at the corporate items and one-off adjustments. Acquisition costs include prepaid in relation to acquisitions and investments we made during the year, as well as on the issue of the convertible notes and warrants. Worth noting that all of our short-term and long-term incentives are provided in shares to align the team to the success of the group and are reported as share payments. Increased expense reflects increase in headcount and also includes AUD 102.7 million in relation to tenure and performance shares issued to the Quad founders approved by shareholders on the acquisition of Quad. Tenure shares will be issued, providing the founders remain employed on the first and second anniversary of the transaction date, and the performance shares will be issued on achieving the same transaction volume hurdles. The first transaction hurdle has been achieved and there are two hurdles that are yet to be achieved.
We look at the fair value loss in the one-off QuadPay as in the subsequent slides. The increase in depreciation and amortization reflects the amortization of intangibles of Quad on the acquisition of Quad and the write-off of the QuadPay brand on the rebrand initiative currently underway. Just moving to the next slide. You'll recall seeing this at the half year results. Adjustment has no bearing on cash of the QuadPay business. It's an accounting adjustment only. Business is performing ahead of expectations and achievement of the first performance milestone is evidence of this. When we were negotiating the acquisition of Quad prior to COVID hitting in March last year, our share price had fell and the AUD exchange rate was deteriorating.
In order to eliminate the impact of these market fluctuations, we agreed a share ratio with the vendors, and the ratio was such that the number of shares to be issued on acquisition would be approximately 23% of the issued share capital at completion. This essentially fixed the number of shares to be issued, leaving the share price to be determined. Accounting standards require the share price that we use to determine the cost of acquisition is the share price on the date transaction is approved by shareholders. That was the 31st of August. There's no scope to adopt a different date, and this is considered the fair value. As you can see from the share price graph on the slide, so likely a reasonable person would consider the share price of AUD 9.16 the day the transaction was approved fair value.
In conjunction with our independent valuers and by looking at the VWAP to the date of acquisition, we assessed a fair value that equated to a share price of approximately AUD 6.50 as a more reasonable assessment, and the consequence of reporting a fair value adjustment. We had to revalue our existing shareholding in Quad to the AUD 9.16. In terms of the sequence of events, on acquisition we revalued our existing holding up to AUD 9.16, recording the fair value again of AUD 110 million, and the day after we record an adjustment of AUD 416 million to reflect a more appropriate assessment of fair value, giving us a debt of about AUD 306. This is obviously a one-off adjustment and will only appear this year. Moving on to the convertible notes and warrants. We issued two lots of convertible notes and one lot of warrants during the year.
When we look at the acquisition of Quad, it was important that it be accompanied by additional funding to ensure that the combined businesses will result in further growth. At the time, we looked at raising equity convertible notes and other funding options, the share price at the time was around AUD 370. A convertible note was assessed as less dilutive for shareholders compared to alternatives. Following approval from shareholders, we issued AUD 100 million in convertible notes for the conversion price of AUD 5.53 and AUD 100 million in warrants with an exercise price of AUD 5.16, both significant premiums to the prevailing share price. When we account for these notes, we have to separate them into a debt host and an embedded derivative. The embedded derivative reflecting the variable conversion in terms of notes.
We have to revalue the embedded derivative as well as the warrants at fair market value at each reporting date. Using a share price of AUD 7.57 at 30 June, it resulted in the group reporting a fair value loss of AUD 82 million for the year. We're reporting a fair value loss or gain using this process every year in reporting period. Just to note, in terms of sensitivity, a 10% move in our share price will lead to a fair value adjustment of around AUD 23 million. It's fairly sensitive. In addition, we issued AUD 400 million in zero coupon unsecured notes in April, which have a seven-year maturity with an option for investors to put the notes as if after three years at 109.36% of the principal.
At maturity, investors have the option to convert into ordinary shares at AUD 12.39 or redeem at 116.96% of the principal. The notes are split into a debt and an equity component, but there is no requirement to fair value either component. The second issuance, a very vanilla issuance, and will not impact the P&L going forward. Moving to the balance sheet. Talk a little bit about cash on the next slide. Increase in receivables is really due to an increase in marketing or prepaid marketing costs and accrued transactional income. The growth in receivables reported net of unearned income, allowance for bad debts, and it's supported by the increase in borrowings in the process by capital raises being used to fund receivables and defer borrowings until such time as we need the funds for investment purposes or to drive growth.
Investments that we reported last year included the group's holding in Quad, which has obviously been removed as on acquisition, and currently the AUD 19 million reflects our investment in Twisto. The movement in intangible assets and goodwill reflects the acquisition of Quad. We had those valued in conjunction with independent valuers and predominantly as a software platform and partner relationships. Trade and other payables, increasing amounts of use of merchants and other suppliers and obviously increases in line with our volumes. The deferred consideration relates to consideration payable to the vendors of the Payflex hitting transaction volumes hurdle over the first and second year post-acquisition. Pleased to advise they hit the first hurdle and the shares were subsequently issued. They've also hit the second hurdle. We've covered the financial liabilities on the convertible notes and warrants on the previous slide. Just moving to the cash flow.
Generated a positive cash flow of AUD 44.2 million, AUD 52 million excluding acquisition costs. Movement in receivables, largely supported by borrowings. Investments relate to our Spotii Twisto Tendo and Payflex investments. The convertible notes raised AUD 491 million net of costs, and we raised AUD 176 million in the capital raise and AUD 2 million on converted options. Just looking to our available cash position. Next slide. Sorry. At AUD 330 million reported on the balance sheet, none of that is restricted for sitting in the trusts and funding warehouses or sitting on the balance sheet about to go into the trustee warehouses. We're adjusting for that. When we have the surplus funds in our warehouses, so that we don't have to draw down from funders, and then as we need those funds to fund operations and make investments, we pull them out with commensurate drawings from the funders.
At 30 June, we have AUD 253 million sitting in our AU trusts and $26 million sitting in the U.S. funding facility that we were able to draw down if required. 30 June available cash to fund future growth and investments is AUD 461.6 million. I'll now hand over to Pete to talk a little bit more about the funding facilities we have in place.
Thanks, Martin. Similarly to the previous summary with AUD 460 million available to fund our growth, we are in an equally good position with regards to our debt funding. Really well-placed to support our growth. Combination of our consumer receivables, there we have almost AUD 1 billion available to support future growth transactions. With the high recycling nature of the U.S. facility, we can support $5 billion of transaction volume with the current structures in place. Following our ratings upgrade on our senior notes, we've touched on, in Australia as a result of our excellent performance of our receivables. We have now received AAA rating and, to sort of put that into some sort of context, our last rated note issuance priced at a weighted average margin of 1.03% below the previous issuance.
One percent gains on a AUD 500 million tranche is obviously quite a meaningful outcome in terms of bottom-line benefit. We're currently in market to replace and refinance our 2019-1 series of AUD 500 million, and we would expect a further reduction resulting from that transaction. Really excited about some of the outcomes. Obviously, we have a facility in place to support Zip Business scale with AUD 100 million. Really well-placed currently with regards to debt funding. Further upside to come with regards to the weighted average cost of capital, in this 12-month period. Just back to Larry to summarize our priorities and outlook and close the presentation before questions.
Thanks, Peter. Just on the next slide. Obviously a really, really big year for the company. I think what you've seen here today, big step-ups in funding, going global. You can imagine below the surface of the water, a lot of peddling the team has been doing as we build out a lot of these functions, uplift capability and build our global governance and operating rhythm. Very pleased with the direction it's going. As we look forward for FY 2022, four key areas for us as a business. One, continue to drive preference and customer engagement. Two, we have to deliver more value for merchants. Three, our global story. We have to mature and drive growth in our established markets, also capitalizing on the high-growth markets. The fourth really connects to our purpose for creating a financially fearless world.
We need to do more for the community. Literacy, financial well-being. Also providing knowledge and tooling for our customers and supporting our Zipsters internally. When we look specifically at the next 12 months, already in this quarter, FY 2022 has kicked off strongly considering Australia has a range of states that are currently in lockdown. Again, our everywhere technology and also our diversity and exposure to a range of industries, is showing that year to date, we're up 58% in Australia. In the U.S. as well, the growth is continuing, 240% growth year to date on TTV versus FY 2021. In the year ahead, when we look at Australia, we have 60% brand awareness, which has been a huge step up from where we were a couple of years ago, and we really just have to capitalize on that. We are one of the leaders in markets.
We need to continue to acquire new customer segments. We need to drive more frequency with our customers in the app. It's not just subscriptions and bills and Pay Now, but the introduction of the PFM tooling means we'll see much more of a customer's everyday wallet and have the ability to control, track, and switch payments to be that sort of first choice. In Australia as well, at the end of FY 2022, expect to see more penetration exposure to small business. We've seen some really exciting signs for Zip Business, and we hope to see that. The U.S., I'm here at the moment spending a lot of times with the teams. It's very exciting. We are in discussions with many great retailers, technology and financial services business. We're very confident that we'll be able to secure a couple of transformational deals. Equally in-store is a big focus.
The return to store, being able to be used everywhere, we need to nail in the U.S. We did an early pilot with physical card that saw, with a small cohort, five times more spend than other users. The uniqueness of our construct in this country, being able to use Pay-in-4 everywhere, we really have to double down on. With partners, we've demonstrated in the last year an ability now to show up as one of very few global buy now, pay later brands, and that trust and credibility and being able to integrate once, open up multiple markets, is generating really, really good business. Again, end of the year, we expect to see many more global partnerships. We're investing a lot more at the merchant level to make that easier.
Our promise to merchants is integrate once, and we handle all of that complexity behind the curtain, regulatory, conversion, economics, and licensing. The COVID trends that we saw in FY 2021, we believe are here to stay. A lot of customers have become very comfortable shopping online. When we talk to retailers and merchant partners, there's huge CapEx going into two key areas, payment choice and fulfillment choice. Meeting the customer where she is, whether it's online, in store, how she wants to pay, which means we can really plug into that investment, and it brings forward a lot of the pipeline activity, and alternative payments comes to the boil. As I spoke on the return to store. We've just rebranded over here in the U.S. from QuadPay to Zip.
There was lots of passion around the rebrand in a lot of the social and other channels. It has landed really, really well and given us a fantastic platform to really create that trusted buy now, pay later payments brand, focused really on the customer, focused on the merchant, who will be investing a lot more. That platform is already starting to see some really interesting, exciting opportunities before us. Finally, as we touched on products, our secret sauce is our product and engineering teams in all markets. Expect to see more and more innovation. As we consolidate globally on a single technology stack, we're starting to see the compounding benefits of developing a feature in one market and rolling it out into other markets. We expect that to compound over time. It's been a busy 12 months.
Even though we're eight years into the journey, we are extremely excited about the year ahead. We have a great leadership team in all markets. It's very noisy, which is exciting, and we're very confident about the year ahead. We have a strong focus, as the team touched on maintaining strong unit economics, driving operating leverage in mature markets, and investing for growth. I just want to pause there. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and we'll open up for questions.
Okay. Thanks, Larry. Obviously, we're a little bit tight on time, we'll just take a few here.
We'll open up the line for Roger Samuel for the first question.
Hi, morning, guys. Thanks. Your bad debt as a percentage of GTV went down year-on-year. I think in the second half, it ticked up versus the first half. I am just wondering if there is any seasonal factor on this, and what should we be expecting bad debt as a proportion of GTV going forward? That is my first question.
Yeah. Thanks, Roger. I think the slight increase in bad debt was a direct reflection of some changed risk settings that we took in November last year. I think if you recall, at the onset of COVID, we made some conservative adjustments to our risk appetite in light of the external challenges. What we saw was bad debts decrease in line with those risk settings over a six- or nine-month period. In about November, we clearly had a very good handle on the performance off the back of a lot of data that we'd received through COVID. We made the determination that our actual bad debts as a percentage were probably too low for our business, and that really maximizing revenue and customer acquisition could be managed at a more aggressive approval rate.
Which probably, the losses that we saw starting to increase were directly in line with that strategy. Really well-controlled process off the back of significant investment in our credit and risk capability. In terms of going forward, might be a marginal increase above that percentage of GTV number in line with that more aggressive settings. Obviously, external factors really will play a part in how we manage that risk over the next 12 months.
Okay. My next question is on your bank fees, which has gone up as a percentage of GTV. Yeah, we can understand it just because of your expansion to the U.S. How should we think about the alternative processing methods outside of the scheme rails? How do you go about doing this? Is this going to be something that PFM or Pocketbook is going to do to your business?
Yeah. It's probably more relevant for significant opportunity in the U.S., given the interchange costs of processing transactions on scheme rails is a bit materially higher there. Yeah. ACH, bank transfer payments is significantly lower cost of processing. That is an initiative that we'll be undertaking over the next 12 months to really reduce that number. There's large upside there for us, and that will continue to deliver bottom-line benefits as we scale.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Roger.
Yes. Sorry, guys. We've run out of time. We might finish up there. Maybe a final concluding remark from Larry.
Thank you. I think that's what we'd like to say. Thank you, and expect to see some exciting stuff from the team. The business is well capitalized. We think the opportunity is larger this year than it's ever been. I'm here in the U.S. to help the team as well, which is quite exciting. After this call, we'll get back to work. Thank you all.
Thanks. Just a reminder of our first ever Retail Investor Day for those of you who might be on the call who've subscribed to that. On the 8th of September, really looking forward to giving access to some of our retail investors and supporters, and we'll do a deeper dive on some product initiatives and certainly have more flex with regards to question time. Thank you all for your support. As Larry touched on, really have kicked off FY 2022 accelerating even faster than where we exited FY 2021, and we look forward to another massive year. Thank you very much.