It cost Cierra Chesir around $1,500 to spend four days at Secrets Moxché, a five-star, all-inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on business. The attorney turned travel agent had been approved for a “familiarization trip,” a discounted vacation designed for travel professionals to get to know a destination, with just a month’s notice.
So the 36-year-old Milwaukee, Wis., resident decided to finance the trip in four interest-free installments via her Affirm Card, a hybrid debit and financing card from the buy now, pay later company.
“Sometimes I don’t just have $2,000 to drop like that,” Chesir said. “Allowing me the opportunity to pay it in four installments is just helpful.”
If she hadn’t had the Affirm Card, Chesir said she probably would have paid for the trip with a credit card.
Cierra Chesir, 36, on a work-related trip to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The independent travel agent financed the business expense with an interest-free Affirm Card loan.
Affirm is one of several fintech companies lending consumers cash through a buy now, pay later model, which allows people to request financing for individual purchases with the tap of a button. B.N.P.L. companies like Affirm, Klarna, and Block’s Afterpay came into the spotlight during the pandemic as consumers took out loans to finance online shopping. The sector has only grown since.
Affirm’s card—which comes in plastic and digital wallet versions—is the company’s most direct challenge to what it considers to be its biggest competitor: credit cards. Over the last few years, the B.N.P.L. company has worked to outgrow its reputation of financing lockdown-era online shopping sprees. Instead, it wants to be taken seriously as an alternative to traditional credit that can finance day-to-day purchases as large as fridges and as small as burritos. Through its card, Affirm hopes to become a permanent fixture in consumers’ wallets.
The card’s main appeal is that it lets consumers access Affirm’s installment financing when purchasing products from any vendor, not just ones that have existing partnerships with the company. Instead of selecting a B.N.P.L. option at checkout, borrowers swipe or tap their Affirm Card, then have 24 hours to request financing after making a purchase of at least $50. If no request is placed, the full payment is withdrawn from a linked bank account.
Affirm launched its financing card with Visa four years ago, but the product has accelerated in popularity over the last year. As of September, Affirm Card had 2.8 million active users, twice as many as last year, per company data. Total spend on the card more than doubled in the same period. Affirm Card purchases accounted for just a fraction of the B.N.P.L. company’s total transactions, but one that’s growing fast.
“ I probably consider it one of the best growth initiatives for the company,” said Kyle Joseph, an analyst at Stephens.
In June, Affirm closed out fiscal year 2025 with a revenue of $3.2 billion, a nearly 40% increase from the year before. Profits reached $52 million, or 15 cents per share, compared to a net loss the prior year. Analysts expect revenue to soar past $4 billion in fiscal year 2026, with a profit of $2.87 per share.
This month, Affirm reported a better-than-expected start to that fiscal year, citing Affirm Card as an important driver of growth. In their first quarter, ended Sept. 30, the company recorded a profit of $80.7 million, or 23 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $100.2 million, or 31 cents a share, a year earlier.
Wall Street is paying attention. Following the robust earnings report, Affirm’s stock popped over 13% in after hours trading to nearly $75 a share. The stock has mostly held steady, closing at $76.09 on Monday.
“We see buy now, pay later as kind of a hybrid between debit and credit,” said James Friedman, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. “If it winds up with the similar adoption cycle that debit had, you wanna be invested in any of the market share leaders. Affirm is one of those.”
For now, B.N.P.L. isn’t anywhere near posing a serious threat to the credit card industry. Americans made over $3.6 trillion worth of purchases on credit cards in 2024, according to market research firm Emarketer—over 40 times the amount they borrowed from B.N.P.L. companies. Still, Affirm Card makes it a little bit easier for users to borrow from the company instead of swiping their credit card, a choice the company is betting people will make more and more often.
It’s the choice that Chesir made earlier this year when she paid for her trip to Playa del Carmen. She’s used B.N.P.L. financing for years, she said, limiting herself only to purchases she could pay in full if need be and never missing a payment. But she only requested an Affirm Card a few months ago after it was promoted to her on the app.
Shoppers’ appetites for installment financing have ballooned in recent years. In 2024, around 86 million Americans borrowed from a B.N.P.L. company, according to Emarketer, a 72% increase from the 50 million who used it in 2021. And they’re not just accessing loans to cover large, one-time purchases. Around 25% of B.N.P.L. borrowers have financed their groceries in installments, a recent survey by loan marketplace LendingTree found.
The fintech sector’s growth—and popularity among younger shoppers—has some lending experts worried. In TikToks and in the pages of newspapers, young people have shared horror stories about finding themselves thousands of dollars in debt after taking out more B.N.P.L. loans than they could handle.
Such stories are worst-case scenarios, but even the average borrower sees an uptick in indicators of financial distress, like overdraft fees and credit card interest, once they start using B.N.P.L., according to Stanford Business School research.
“Any time we start seeing credit being offered easily and cheaply to a group of people, we start to get worried,” said Ed deHaan, the 2023 paper’s lead author. “Is this causing people to overextend themselves?”
Of course, people also overextend themselves on credit cards, which have a slightly higher delinquency rate than Affirm loans, according to the latest data. The 30-day delinquency rate on credit card loans for the three months ending March 31, 2025 was around 3%, according to the Federal Reserve. For Affirm loans, the rate was 2.4%.
There’s also the question of building credit. Unlike credit cards, B.N.P.L. loans haven’t historically factored into a borrower’s credit health. Borrowers aren’t punished for defaulting on loans, but they also aren’t rewarded for paying them off on time.
Affirm is working to change that. The company has started sharing user data with credit bureaus Experian and TransUnion, and is collaborating with lead credit score company Fair Isaac, also known as FICO, on a way to factor B.N.P.L. loans into creditworthiness. The model hasn’t been rolled out yet, but the companies say that early trials gave the majority of B.N.P.L. users higher scores or no score changes.
In teaming up with the credit score industry—something competitors Klarna and Afterpay said they have no intention of doing—Affirm is doubling down on its strategy of becoming a viable alternative to the credit card industry. Once Affirm loans start impacting credit scores, the company will resemble a traditional credit card that much more.
When Affirm Card launched in 2021, CEO Max Levchin told CNBC that the product is “sort of the anti-credit card.” Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal, has long criticized the credit card industry for a lack of transparency around interest rates and late fees. Affirm does not charge late or hidden fees, but it does charge interest on many loans. Despite being known for its four interest-free installments plan, approximately 72% of Affirm loans bear interest, per company data.
There’s another crucial difference between the Affirm Card and credit cards. While traditional credit is highly regulated, B.N.P.L. purveyors are not. Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stopped enforcing a short-lived rule stating that major B.N.P.L. players should be subject to the same disclosures and procedures as credit cards, such as protections regarding disputes and refunds.
“Consumers may be expecting to get the same protections as with a credit card,” said Nadine Chabrier, the senior policy and litigation counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. “But they’re not going to get help from a regulator in receiving that.”
Affirm had been willing to play ball with the CFPB. In 2024, when their short-lived B.N.P.L. regulation went into place, the company celebrated the decision. “We are encouraged that the CFPB is promoting consistent industry standards, many of which already reflect how Affirm operates,” the company said in a statement, which contrasted Klarna’s more critical response.
Following the CFPB’s regulatory weakening, Affirm users have no choice but to take the lender at their word.