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0 pointsstu2b504y ago0 comments

That’s not how the business model works (or how they’d want it to work anyway). Affirm makes money on transactions in the “correct” way via very high merchant fees.

Merchants will pay affirm a large fee for conversion benefits (e.g better a customer pay $700 even if I lose $50 to affirm fees than for them to pay $0 because they got spooked by the price). Affirm gets the fee. They suffer risks from inflation and nonpayment. Hopefully for them one is larger than the other.

0 comments

mint24y ago

If $X spooks someone for a discretionary spend item, then in most cases it’s a bad financial decision for them to pay $X just spread over Y months.

bee_rider4y ago

This is a problem with the whole credit system, right? Yes it is a bad system.

drc500free4y ago

Instead of building wealth, we're polishing poverty so that more people can live right up against the edge.

oh_sigh4y ago

Ah, okay, fair enough then. I didn't realize merchants were paying affirm for this. Though I really hope the merchants look at their data. The only time I've used affirm is when I'm already on the checkout page, literally credit card in hand, where I would have bought the product no matter what. But yeah I'll take a 6 month 0% interest loan instead of a 1 month 0% interest loan.

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