Affirm Holdings
Affirm Holdings, Inc. is a publicly traded financial technology company based in San Francisco, United States. The company was founded in 2012. Affirm offers a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service as an alternative to the traditional credit card, for both online and in-store purchases. The company claims to use machine learning in loan underwriting which it says boosts approval rates for borrowers, and has been cited to improve sales outcomes for partnering retailers. History Affirm was founded in 2012 by Max Levchin, Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, and Alex Rampell as part of the initial portfolio of startup studio HVF. Levchin, who co-founded PayPal, became CEO of Affirm in 2014. According to RACKED in November 2017, Affirm had launched an app which allowed consumers to take out loans for purchases at any retailer. The company aimed at "building and perfecting a new underwriting system", powered by machine learning, to determine consumer creditworthiness. RACKED added that the four retailers it spoke to reported "significantly higher sales and more frequent purchases, with Affirm customers". Affirm's use of machine learning in underwriting has also been claimed by the lender to generate "higher loan approval rate compared to its competitors", while ensuring the borrower can "comfortably repay". In 2018, CBS News cited Affirm's BNPL service as an alternative to the traditional credit card, while expressing a caution about the interest rates charged by BNPL services. Affirm announced a partnership with Walmart in February 2019. Under the partnership, the company is available to customers in-store and on the Walmart website. Affirm has also partnered with e-commerce platforms including Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Zen-Cart. On November 18, 2020, Affirm filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO). On December 12, 2020, it was reported that Affirm had postponed its IPO. On January 13, 2021, Affirm became listed on NASDAQ with symbol AFRM, raising about $1.2 billion in its IPO. By the next day, the price of shares had doubled, making Levchin's stake worth about $2.5 billion. In May 2021, Affirm acquired Returnly, a financial technology service company, for $300 million. Affirm was Amazon's exclusive BNPL partner in the United States through January 2023. In May 2022, Affirm signed a partnership with the financial infrastructure firm Stripe, Inc. to make its adaptive checkout service available to Stripe users in the US. According to Payments Dive in October 2022, Bank of America Securities identified Affirm as the most frequently used BNPL app in the US with a 30% market share, while noting a slowdown in BNPL sector growth in the US and worldwide. In February 2023, the company announced that it would layoff 19 percent of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan, and shut down its crypto unit. In March 2023, U.S. News & World Report cited Affirm as a "lower-interest alternative to a credit card", available for both in-store or online purchases, while also stating that "it has downsides". References External links 2012 establishments in California Financial technology