Affirm Targets Card Networks With Broader Payments Push

As buy now, pay later (BNPL) firms compete to move beyond checkout financing, Affirm used its investor forum Tuesday (May 12)  to argue that growth and share of spend across consumer payments will be cemented through data, underwriting and network scale rather than promotional lending alone.

“We’ve built a network,” CEO Max Levchin said at the program’s outset. “It is a network that is real in a sense that it is fully closed loop. We are both the issuer of credit, the transmitter of the credit information, the acquirer and the risk manager.”

Levchin contended that Affirm’s competitive advantage rests on controlling the full flow of transaction and repayment data. He argued that the company’s model differs from traditional credit card underwriting because every transaction is evaluated individually in real time.

“The world was ready for a better approach to credit,” Levchin told attendees.

Levchin also positioned Affirm as increasingly central to merchants’ conversion strategies, saying the company’s integrated financing products routinely boost checkout conversion rates by roughly 30% while also increasing average order values.

More broadly, he suggested the company ultimately wants to become indispensable to merchants.

“The goal of Affirm has always been to become as important to merchants as Visa, Mastercard, American Express,” Levchin added. “We’re getting there by building out this network by experiencing these network effects.”

Data as the Core Competitive Weapon

Executives stressed that data infrastructure and underwriting sophistication sit at the center of the company’s growth strategy.

Levchin described data as “rocket fuel” powering the platform’s underwriting and product decisions, noting that the company has spent years building machine learning systems capable of making underwriting and pricing decisions in milliseconds.

Libor Michalek, Affirm’s president, said the company’s transaction-level underwriting creates advantages traditional credit models struggle to replicate because each purchase is evaluated independently rather than through static credit lines.

Over time, that underwriting approach has produced a growing pool of behavioral and repayment data. Michalek said Affirm has processed $150 billion in volume and tracked 2.3 billion repayments over the last 14 years.

Executives also highlighted the growing role of AI models inside the platform. Michalek said the company’s newer transformer-based underwriting architecture is already outperforming previous model generations by uncovering pockets of opportunity within existing datasets.

Building a Consumer Ecosystem

Much of the investor forum focused on expanding Affirm beyond installment loans into a broader consumer payments ecosystem.

Vishal Kapoor, senior vice president of product, described “structural bets” centered on the Affirm Card, digital wallets, agentic commerce and banking integrations.

Commentary during the evening revealed that Affirm Card now has 4.4 million active cardholders spending roughly $2,400 annually, with spending growth running at 130% year over year.

Kapoor said cardholders spend roughly three times more across the Affirm ecosystem than non-card users, helping drive broader engagement throughout the network.

Executives argued that higher transaction frequency creates a reinforcing cycle in which more usage generates more data, which in turn improves underwriting, personalization and merchant targeting.

Affirm said transactions per active consumer have increased 50% since the company’s last investor forum, reaching 6.7 transactions annually.

Kapoor also outlined the company’s growing ambitions inside digital wallets. The company highlighted integrations with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Chrome autofill tools as part of an effort to extend Affirm financing into both eCommerce and physical retail.

According to the company, wallet-related volume reached $1.7 billion over the trailing 12 months, with 155% year-over-year growth.

Executives pointed to in-store spending as an especially important expansion opportunity. Kapoor said restaurant spending through wallet integrations grew fourfold year over year, while spending in gas and services tripled.

The company also detailed plans to deepen engagement through loyalty products and personalized merchant offers. Kapoor said Affirm plans to launch a loyalty program offering cardholders exclusive deals and additional purchasing power without charging annual fees.

Funding, Structural Advantages and Affirm Bank

Chief Financial Officer Rob O’Hare argued that the company’s scale and underwriting consistency are producing structural advantages in capital markets as well.

O’Hare said Affirm has diversified funding relationships across roughly 200 partners spanning warehouse lenders, ABS investors and forward-flow buyers.

Executives highlighted falling funding costs as evidence that investors increasingly trust the company’s underwriting performance. According to the presentation, ABS spreads have narrowed from roughly 300 basis points in 2023 to about 100 basis points more recently.

The company also used the investor forum to provide additional details about its planned industrial bank.

John Marion, who is slated to become president of Affirm Bank once approved, said the proposed Nevada-chartered industrial bank would allow the company to diversify funding through direct-to-consumer deposits while avoiding bank holding company restrictions.

Marion said the bank would focus primarily on high-yield savings accounts and originating the same BNPL loans currently offered across the platform.

Executives projected that by the end of the de novo period, Affirm Bank could originate roughly 40% to 50% of the company’s loan volume while holding approximately 10% of those loans on balance sheet.

The event crystallized that Affirm’s future growth depends on embedding itself into the broader consumer commerce ecosystem through payments infrastructure and data-driven personalization.