SAN FRANCISCO — Affirm is seeing consumers use buy now, pay later financing more frequently and across a wider range of everyday purchases, with transactions growing faster than overall spending and its payment card gaining millions of users, according to an analysis by PYMNTS.
Affirm reported 53 million transactions during its fiscal fourth quarter, up 41% from a year earlier, while gross merchandise volume, or GMV, increased 36% to $14.1 billion. Average order value declined 4%.
Revenue increased 33% to about $1.2 billion.
PYMNTS said the results point to BNPL moving beyond financing occasional large retail purchases and becoming a tool consumers use to manage spending across more frequent, lower-value transactions.
Affirm Card Growth Accelerates
Affirm Card was a major contributor to that shift.
Active cardholders increased 125% to 5.2 million, while card GMV jumped 124% to $2.8 billion. About 19% of Affirm’s active consumers now use the card, up 9 percentage points from a year earlier.
Direct-to-consumer GMV increased 49% to $4.7 billion.
Affirm CEO Max Levchin said the company wants to increase both card adoption and spending among cardholders but emphasized that growth must be balanced against credit risk.
“Your job is to help someone spend money responsibly,” Levchin told analysts, according to PYMNTS.
Affirm’s total active consumer base increased 21% to 27.8 million, while transactions per active consumer climbed 20% to seven during the trailing 12 months.
The company’s short-term, 0% Pay in X installment product also recorded 41% volume growth. PYMNTS noted that merchants can subsidize those financing offers to encourage purchases, manage inventory or promote product upgrades.
Spending Expands Beyond Retail
Affirm also reported substantial growth outside the retail categories traditionally associated with BNPL.
Services volume increased 49%, while its “other” category, which includes smaller merchants and wallet partners, jumped 98%. The number of active merchants increased 51% to 571,000.
General merchandise remained Affirm’s largest category at 31% of GMV, followed by travel and ticketing at 15% and fashion and beauty at 13%.
PYMNTS said the broader merchant network creates more opportunities for consumers to use Affirm, potentially increasing transaction frequency and making the platform more attractive to additional merchants.
Delinquencies Remain in Focus
The expansion into more frequent spending comes as Affirm continues to monitor consumer credit performance.
Delinquencies of 30 days or more on monthly installment loans, excluding Pay in X and Peloton, were 2.5%, down from 2.8% in the previous quarter but above 2.3% a year earlier.
Sixty-day delinquencies increased to 1.5% from 1.4% a year earlier, while 90-day delinquencies remained unchanged at 0.6%.
Recent monthly installment loans are tracking toward ultimate net charge-offs of about 3.5%, consistent with Affirm’s historical performance, while recent Pay in 4 loan vintages remain below 1% of GMV, according to the company.
Affirm expects GMV to exceed $64 billion in fiscal 2027. Its shares rose 8.9% in after-hours trading Thursday following the earnings report, PYMNTS reported.
