Affirm Holdings, Inc. (AFRM)

Affirm, founded in 2012, operates a payment network that offers pay-over-time financing to consumers at checkout and helps merchants and commerce platforms convert sales and grow. Its proprietary technology assesses and prices risk at the transaction level using machine learning, rather than relying solely on static credit scores. The risk models are trained on data from approximately 553 million loans to date. Affirm states that it has charged no late fees since its founding and does not use deferred or compounding interest. In fiscal year 2026 it facilitated $50.2 billion of gross merchandise volume (GMV).

Affirm has three main loan products: Pay-in-X (short-term plans with one to four 0% APR installments), 0% APR monthly installment loans, and interest-bearing monthly installment loans with simple, non-compounding interest. In fiscal 2026 these represented 16%, 14% and 70% of GMV, respectively. Its offerings include Affirm at Checkout, integrated through a direct API or platform partners, and the Affirm App and Marketplace, which carry personalized merchant offers. It also offers the Affirm Card, a physical or virtual debit card with pay-over-time functionality, virtual cards for merchants not integrated with Affirm, and an FDIC-insured high-yield savings account (Affirm Money Account) in partnership with Cross River Bank. For merchants it provides prequalification, brand-sponsored promotional financing, and a dashboard with analytics. Revenue comes from merchant fees, which are generally larger on 0% APR products, from interest on loans it originates or purchases from originating bank partners, and from a share of interchange fees through card-issuing partners.

Consumers on the platform span the credit spectrum. About 571 thousand active merchants, from small businesses to large enterprises, use Affirm across electronics, equipment and auto, fashion and beauty, general merchandise, home and lifestyle, services, sporting goods and outdoors, and travel and ticketing. Repeat consumers drove 96% of transactions in fiscal 2026, and active consumers averaged about 7.0 transactions. The platform is available in the United States, Canada and the U.K., with a limited launch in Australia in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and planned expansion in continental Europe and Australia. Sales are seasonally higher in the second and fourth fiscal quarters.

Affirm builds its core systems and data infrastructure in-house on a cloud-first platform. Its loans are funded through four channels: warehouse credit facilities, term and revolving securitizations (including a master trust), pass-through loan sales, and forward flow loan sale arrangements. Counterparties include depository institutions, investment banks, hedge funds, pension funds, asset managers and insurers. Competitors include card issuers such as Synchrony, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Capital One, Bread Financial and American Express, as well as PayPal, Block, Klarna and merchants' own pay-over-time options. Many are substantially larger than Affirm. As of June 30, 2026, Affirm had 2,358 employees, primarily in the United States.