Affirm Launches UK BNPL Partnership With Stripe

Pay later provider Affirm has launched an expanded partnership with payments infrastructure company Stripe.

The collaboration is designed to bring Affirm’s solutions to U.K.-based Stripe merchants for the first time, the companies said in a Tuesday (June 2) news release. Beginning next month, U.K. businesses using Stripe will be able to add Affirm to their online checkout.

“Checkout is no longer just a payment moment, it’s a decision moment,” said Ruth Spratt, vice president and U.K. country manager at Affirm.

“Consumers are increasingly seeking payment options that offer more control and clarity, and merchants are seeing the impact that can have on conversion and customer loyalty. Expanding our partnership with Stripe helps us do exactly that, bringing these benefits to more businesses across the UK.”

Fran Ryan, Stripe’s chief business officer, added that bringing the partnership to the U.K. is “the next step in making the right payment options accessible to businesses everywhere” as merchants seek frictionless payment options.

The companies say their new partnership builds on the strength of their work in Canada and the U.S., where Stripe businesses using Affirm saw increased revenues and conversion.

In addition, Stripe and Affirm are “collaborating on the future of AI-powered commerce, with a shared focus on making payments more seamless and transparent as agentic experiences evolve,” the release added.

The two companies earlier this year said they would support shared payment tokens to allow for secure pay-over-time experiences “in AI-powered commerce environments.”

In other buy now, pay late (BNPL) news, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that the millions of consumers who are cutting back the most are using pay-later services the least.

That research, based on a survey of 2,283 U.S. adults conducted in late March and early April 2026, split consumers into three groups based on behavior — not age, income or geography — to explore how they react to financial pressure.

“It shows that the variation in financial outcomes within a single generation is far wider than the variation between generations,” PYMNTS wrote. “The determining factor is behavioral; age, income and geography explain less than how people responded to financial pressure. Consumer usage of BNPL illustrates that point.”

So-called “reactive consumers” — those whose spending and savings both declined and who coped almost entirely by cutting back — used BNPL at a rate of just 8%.

“By contrast, 48% of consumers who took proactive steps, such as adding income, negotiating bills and reaching for financial tools, used BNPL — six times more,” PYMNTS added.