Affirm

Affirm’s revenue channels include merchant and affiliate fees, simple interest, card interchange, gains or losses on loan sales, and servicing fees on loans held by third parties. It states that it charges neither late fees nor compound interest. Loans are not universally interest-free: rates and terms depend on the transaction and eligibility assessment.⁠[2][3]

Affirm emerged from Max LevchinMax LevchinMax Levchin is an entrepreneur and computer scientist, one of the co-founders of PayPal and the founder and chief executive officer of the consumer payments and credit company Affirm.Open the full entry’s HVF innovation lab. In his PlaidPlaidPlaid is a financial technology company co-founded by Zach Perret and William Hockey and headquartered in San Francisco. It provides infrastructure connecting financial accounts with applications, with products spanning account verification, payments, lending and fraud prevention, and develops AI models for financial transactions. A planned acquisition by Visa was terminated in 2021.Open the full entry interview, Levchin recalled that the early team first developed an underwriting model before turning to purchase financing distributed through merchants. He linked the product’s transparent-pricing principles to his own experience with deferred-interest credit-card debt in college.⁠[4][5]

According to Levchin’s recollection in the same interview, co-founder Alex RampellAlex RampellAlex Rampell (Alastair Rampell) is an entrepreneur and investor, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and leader of its Apps practice. He co-founded TrialPay and Affirm and serves on the boards of Wise and Rocket Companies.Open the full entry secured 1-800-Flowers as the first merchant integration, and results at merchants including Tradesy helped validate the business. This is a founder’s retrospective account; individual merchant results do not establish a platform-wide effect.⁠[4]

Affirm completed its acquisition of Canadian pay-over-time provider PayBright on January 1, 2021. Its Class A shares began trading on NasdaqNasdaqNasdaq is an exchange operator and financial technology company headquartered in New York. It runs The Nasdaq Stock Market and other markets and provides capital markets technology, regulatory technology, and data and index services. Founded in 1971, it combined with OMX AB in 2008, and in March 2026 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved its rules for trading tokenized securities.Open the full entry as AFRM on January 13 at an IPO price of $49. The offering closed January 15 with 28.29 million shares, including 3.69 million under the underwriters’ option; the company reported approximately $1.3 billion in proceeds before expenses.⁠[6][2]

On June 10, 2021, Affirm and Shopify expanded Shop Pay Installments, powered exclusively by Affirm, to all eligible ShopifyShopifyShopify is a commerce software company that originated in Ottawa, Canada, providing merchants with tools for online stores, physical retail, payments, orders and inventory management. The business began with Snowdevil, an online snowboard store founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke and others, and the standalone e-commerce platform launched in 2006. The company went public in 2015 and now trades under the ticker SHOP on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.Open the full entry merchants in the United States. Installments were integrated into Shop Pay without redirecting customers to another website, subject to eligibility and state-availability restrictions.⁠[7]

On August 27, 2021, Affirm announced an AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry partnership initially offering selected U.S. Amazon.com shoppers monthly installments on purchases of $50 or more, with broader availability planned. Approved shoppers could see total costs at checkout, without additional late or hidden fees.⁠[8]

In November 2024, Affirm launched interest-free and interest-bearing monthly installments in the United Kingdom with initial partners Alternative Airlines and Fexco. Its announcement identified Affirm UK Limited as FCA-authorized and regulated, with transaction-level repayment assessments and fixed simple interest calculated on original principal for interest-bearing plans.⁠[9]

The investor FAQ distinguishes the operating company from its holding company: Affirm, Inc. was incorporated in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry in 2012; Affirm Holdings, Inc. was incorporated there on June 12, 2019 and reincorporated in NevadaNevadaNevada is a state in the western United States bordered by Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and California; its capital is Carson City. It was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, as the 36th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,104,614.Open the full entry on July 1, 2025.⁠[2]

On August 27, 2026, Affirm and Shopify launched Shop Pay Installments in Australia, which Affirm described as a return to the market. Approved shoppers could choose fortnightly or monthly, interest-free or interest-bearing plans. Affirm Australia Pty Ltd provides the credit, and merchants can enable the option through Shopify’s administration dashboard.⁠[10]

Fiscal 2027 first-quarter results released November 5, 2026 covered the three months ended September 30. GMV was $14.4 billion, up 34%; revenue was approximately $1.3 billion, up 35%; operating income was $187 million and net income $164 million. GMV measures platform transaction volume, not company revenue.⁠[11][12]

The same letter reported that Affirm’s first transformer-based underwriting model delivered an incremental 3.4% end-to-end conversion improvement with credit losses unchanged. It said decisions remained deterministic, transparent and explainable to consumers. These are company-reported internal results rather than an independent comparative benchmark.⁠[11]

Beyond merchant checkout financing, Affirm Card lets users link a bank account for full payment or apply through the app to finance eligible purchases. The Affirm Money Account is held with Cross River Bank. Affirm itself is not a bank, and its disclosures identify Evolve Bank & Trust or Stride Bank as Affirm Card issuers.⁠[3][1]

As of November 2026, the investor-relations management page lists Max Levchin as founder and CEO. Michael Linford and Libor Michalek both serve as President: Linford oversees finance, markets and corporate functions, while Michalek oversees engineering, risk, operations, product and design. Rob O’Hare is CFO.⁠[5]