Who are Affirm's competitors?
Affirm's fiscal 2026 annual report on Form 10-K, filed August 27, 2026, names three groups of rivals. The first is legacy payment methods: credit and debit cards from issuers including Synchrony, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Capital One, Bread Financial and American Express. The second is mobile wallets and pay-over-time products from PayPal, Block and Klarna. The third is new pay-over-time offerings from legacy financial and payments companies, plus merchants' own pay-over-time options, which can appear next to Affirm at checkout. The rivalry runs both ways: Klarna's 2025 Form 20-F lists Affirm among the payment networks it competes with, Synchrony's 2025 10-K names Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna as non-bank pay-over-time providers, and Sezzle's 2025 10-K counts Affirm among its main competitors. Retail partners are where the contest shows: CNBC reported in March 2025 that Klarna would become Walmart's exclusive buy now, pay later provider, taking the partnership from Affirm, and on October 22, 2026 Affirm announced an exclusive, multi-year deal with Walmart's Sam's Club. On scale, Affirm's GMV was $50.2 billion in the year ended June 30, 2026; Klarna reported GMV of $128 billion for 2025, Synchrony financed $182.3 billion of purchase volume in 2025, and American Express cards carried $1,670 billion of billed business. On AI, Affirm's 10-K warns that competitors may incorporate AI into their products more quickly or more successfully than it does; Klarna says its AI assistant handled 80% of its customer service chats in 2025.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
Data as of Nov 2, 2026 · Affirm profile updated Oct 19, 2026 · 18 sources cited on this page · 56 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
How does Affirm describe its competition in its annual report?
Item 1 of the fiscal 2026 Form 10-K (filed August 27, 2026), under "Our Competition": "Our primary competition consists of: legacy payment methods, such as credit and debit cards, including those provided by card issuing banks such as Synchrony, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Capital One, Bread Financial, and American Express; mobile wallets and other pay-over-time solutions offered by companies such as PayPal, Block and Klarna; and new pay-over-time offerings by legacy financial and payments companies, including those mentioned above. Additionally, some merchants are increasingly offering proprietary pay-over-time options to customers, and in some cases, these are presented parallel to our offerings at checkout."[1]
The risk factors explain why the banks matter: "We expect competition to intensify in the future, especially as the pay-over-time industry has low barriers to entry", and "because many of our competitors are large financial institutions that fund themselves through low-cost insured deposits and continue to own the loans that they originate, they have certain revenue and funding opportunities not available to us."[1]
On AI, the same filing says "our competitors or other third parties may incorporate AI into their products and services more quickly or more successfully than us, which could impair our ability to compete effectively", and that Affirm may not be able to implement products such as Affirm Edge or AdaptAI "as quickly as competitors".[1]
Who competes with Affirm, where, and how do they compare on AI?
Each competitor's scale is its own latest annual figure, on its own measure and period, so the figures are not one series. Affirm's GMV was $50.2 billion in the year ended June 30, 2026, with 27,782 thousand active consumers at that date.
| Competitor | Where they compete | Dated scale figure | How they compare on AI | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klarna | Buy now, pay later and pay-over-time at checkout; named in Affirm's 10-K, and Klarna's 20-F names Affirm. Took Walmart's exclusive BNPL business, through Walmart's OnePay app, from Affirm (CNBC, March 2025) | GMV of $128 billion in 2025; approximately 118 million active consumers and 960,000 merchants across 26 countries at December 31, 2025 | AI assistant launched with OpenAI in February 2024; Klarna says it handled 80% of customer service chats in 2025 | Affirm 10-K FY2026; Klarna 20-F FY2025; CNBC[1][2][5] |
| PayPal | Wallet checkout and BNPL; named in Affirm's 10-K. PayPal offers BNPL in the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K. and Australia, among other markets, and in Japan through Paidy | 439 million active accounts across approximately 200 markets at December 31, 2025 | Its 2025 10-K strategy is to let consumers shop and pay "online, in-person and through artificial intelligence (“AI”) agents", including agentic purchases with PayPal and Venmo | Affirm 10-K FY2026; PayPal 10-K FY2025[1][8] |
| Block (Afterpay and Cash App) | Named in Affirm's 10-K; Block's 10-K says Cash App competes with BNPL providers, and Synchrony's and Sezzle's 10-Ks name Afterpay | 59 million Cash App monthly transacting actives (Q4 2025) | Introduced Moneybot in Cash App and embedded Square AI in the Square Dashboard in Q4 2025 | Affirm 10-K FY2026; Block 10-K FY2025; Block Q4 2025 shareholder letter; Sezzle 10-K[1][9][10][4] |
| Synchrony | First card issuer named in Affirm's 10-K; sells Synchrony Pay Later (pay monthly and Pay in 4) at retailers including Amazon, Lowe's and JCPenney, and its 10-K names Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna as non-bank pay-over-time rivals | $182.3 billion of purchase volume financed in 2025; 70.7 million active accounts at December 31, 2025 | Uses machine learning algorithms for data-led personalization; its 10-K says AI shopping agents may select the payment method at the point of sale | Affirm 10-K FY2026; Synchrony 10-K 2025[1][3] |
| American Express | Card issuer named in Affirm's 10-K; Amex's own 10-K lists point-of-sale lenders and buy now, pay later products among its competitors. Its card-based BNPL received the highest marks with JPMorgan Chase's in a 2025 J.D. Power survey (Payments Dive) | Worldwide billed business of $1,670 billion in 2025 | Agentic Commerce Experiences developer kit and Amex Agent Purchase Protection for purchases by registered AI agents (April 2026) | Affirm 10-K FY2026; American Express 10-K 2025; Payments Dive; American Express[1][7][11][12] |
| Sezzle | Buy now, pay later; Sezzle's 2025 10-K names Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal's Pay Later and Zip as its main U.S. competitors | 3,049 thousand Active Consumers at December 31, 2025 | Uses AI/ML in fraud prevention, risk management, marketing and customer service, per its 10-K | Sezzle 10-K 2025[4] |
Which retail partnerships have Affirm and its rivals won or lost?
| Retailer or platform | What happened | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Walmart | Klarna to become Walmart's exclusive buy now, pay later provider, in stores and online through OnePay, taking the partnership from Affirm, CNBC reported; CNBC called Affirm more U.S.-centric and Klarna's network more global | March 17, 2025[5] |
| Sam's Club | Affirm announced an exclusive, multi-year collaboration: Affirm on SamsClub.com in the coming weeks, with plans to expand to Sam's Club locations in 2027 | October 22, 2026[6] |
| Amazon, Shopify and Apple Pay | Named in Affirm's fiscal 2026 10-K as key commercial partner relationships; the filing says larger platforms such as Apple Pay can take significant time to fully integrate Affirm | August 27, 2026[1] |
| Amazon (rival product) | Synchrony Pay Later is offered at various large retailers including Amazon, per Synchrony's 2025 10-K | February 6, 2026[3] |
What companies are similar to Affirm?
Point-of-sale installment lenders whose product is closest to Affirm's, as described in their own filings.
| Company | Why it is similar | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Klarna | A buy now, pay later network listed on the NYSE that served approximately 118 million active consumers and 960,000 merchants at the end of 2025; like Affirm it has a card, the Klarna Card, with more than 4.2 million active consumers | Klarna 20-F FY2025[2] |
| Afterpay (Block) | Pay-in-installments brand owned by Block (Sezzle's 10-K calls it "a subsidiary of Block, Inc."); Block's definition of Cash App spending includes Afterpay through Cash App | Sezzle 10-K; Block Q4 2025 shareholder letter[4][10] |
| PayPal Pay Later | Short-term BNPL with no interest or consumer late fees for missed payments in most of its markets, plus interest-bearing installment products in the U.S. issued by an independent chartered financial institution | PayPal 10-K FY2025[8] |
| Sezzle | A BNPL lender that offers its product to consumers with little-to-no credit history and waives late and failed payment fees for consumers in its hardship program | Sezzle 10-K 2025[4] |
| Synchrony Pay Later | A bank's answer to Affirm: a pay monthly product and a Pay in 4 product that charges no interest and fees, offered across all five Synchrony sales platforms | Synchrony 10-K 2025[3] |
What does the Affirm profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Affirm AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 19, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 13 dated moves, 8 use cases and 15 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transformer-based real-time underwriting | Every purchase is underwritten individually in real time; the fiscal 2026 10-K says the risk model turns key user identifiers and transaction details into over 1,000 data points (over 500 in the fiscal 2025 10-K). The transformer model, live at US checkout since September 2026, added 3.4% completed purchases in initial deployment. | In production | [13][1][14] |
| ML fraud detection | Affirm's fiscal 2026 10-K says its machine-learning risk models, calibrated on data from over 553 million loans, are custom built to detect fraud and price risk; after a basic identity check, its fraud models use approximately 350 data points (approximately 200 in the fiscal 2025 10-K) to decide near-instantly whether to block a transaction, alongside rules and investigator review. | In production | [1][14] |
| Generative-AI customer-service chatbot | The fiscal 2026 10-K says Affirm currently uses generative AI in its customer-service chatbot, with human involvement in training and monitoring. | In production | [1] |
| AdaptAI personalized credit offers | AI-powered platform matching promotions such as 0% APR or special repayment terms to a consumer's purchase and profile, in use on Affirm's own products and offered to merchants since April 2025. | In production | [15][1] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 17, 2026 | Transformer underwriting model goes live | Affirm launched a transformer-based model that reads the order and timing of events in a credit history; in its first deployment it produced 3.4% more completed purchases than a control group, with a proprietary algorithm providing explainability at checkout speed. | [13] |
| Aug 27, 2026 | Fiscal 2026 10-K and a second President | The 10-K reports $50.2 billion of GMV, 27.8 million active consumers and 2,358 employees, and discloses a generative-AI customer-service chatbot; the same day Michael Linford became a second President alongside Libor Michalek, who keeps engineering, risk and product. | [1][16] |
| May 12, 2026 | Investor Forum: transformer models outperforming | At its 2026 Investor Forum, President Libor Michalek said Affirm had processed $150 billion of volume and tracked 2.3 billion repayments over 14 years, and that its newer transformer-based underwriting architecture was already outperforming previous model generations. | [17] |
| Aug 29, 2025 | Levchin cites a 5% merchant-volume lift from AdaptAI | After fiscal Q4 2025 results (revenue $876 million, up 33%), Levchin highlighted AI, noting early AdaptAI deployments had delivered an average 5% lift in merchant volume. | [18] |
| Apr 30, 2025 | AdaptAI opened to merchants | Affirm made AdaptAI, its AI-powered promotions platform, available to merchant partners for personalized, real-time promotions and credit offers at checkout, after it drove nearly 10% incremental improvements in conversion rates on the Affirm App and Affirm Card. | [15] |
Who are Affirm's biggest competitors?
Affirm's fiscal 2026 10-K names card-issuing banks (Synchrony, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Capital One, Bread Financial and American Express), mobile wallets and pay-over-time products from PayPal, Block and Klarna, and merchants' own pay-over-time options. Among pure BNPL lenders, Klarna is the closest rival: it reported GMV of $128 billion in 2025, against Affirm's $50.2 billion in fiscal 2026.
What companies are similar to Affirm?
Klarna, Block's Afterpay, PayPal Pay Later and Sezzle all sell installment payments at the point of sale, and Synchrony offers a bank-issued equivalent, Synchrony Pay Later, with pay monthly and Pay in 4 products. Sezzle's 2025 10-K names Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal's Pay Later and Zip as its main U.S. competitors.
Is Klarna bigger than Affirm?
By the companies' own measures, yes. Klarna reported GMV of $128 billion for calendar 2025 and about 118 million active consumers at December 31, 2025. Affirm reported GMV of $50.2 billion for its fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, and 27,782 thousand active consumers at that date. The periods and definitions differ.
Do credit card banks compete with Affirm?
Yes, and Affirm lists them first. Its 10-K says many competitors are large financial institutions funded by low-cost insured deposits that keep the loans they originate. Synchrony sells Pay Later products at Amazon and Lowe's, and in a 2025 J.D. Power survey the card-based BNPL plans of American Express and JPMorgan Chase got the highest marks.
How do Affirm's competitors use AI?
On the record: Klarna says its OpenAI-built assistant handled 80% of its customer service chats in 2025; PayPal's 10-K aims to let consumers shop through AI agents; Block added Moneybot to Cash App; American Express launched an agentic commerce developer kit in April 2026. Affirm's own 10-K warns rivals may adopt AI more quickly or more successfully.
- Affirm Holdings Annual Report (Form 10-K) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026
- Klarna Group plc Annual Report (Form 20-F) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Synchrony Financial Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Sezzle Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Klarna, nearing IPO, plucks lucrative Walmart fintech partnership from rival Affirm
- Affirm launches as exclusive pay-over-time provider at Sam's Club
- American Express Company Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- PayPal Holdings, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Block, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Block Q4 2025 Shareholder Letter (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K)
- Gen Z uses BNPL more than credit cards, survey shows
- American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit and Announces Industry-First Protection for Registered Agent Purchases
- Affirm launches transformer-based machine learning model for real-time underwriting
- Affirm Holdings Annual Report (Form 10-K) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025
- Affirm launches "AdaptAI" - its AI-powered promotions platform - to merchant partners
- Affirm Holdings Form 8-K (appointment of Michael Linford as President)
- Affirm Targets Card Networks With Broader Payments Push
- Affirm stock rises 10% as CEO Levchin notes continued consumer strength
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