# Affirm: AI in the payment ecosystem

Source: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/fintech/affirm/payment-ecosystem-ai
Last updated: Oct 19, 2026

*Part of the [Affirm AI strategy profile](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/fintech/affirm).*

## How does Affirm use AI across its payment ecosystem?

Affirm runs machine learning at each step of a pay-over-time checkout and builds the models itself. Its fiscal 2026 10-K says fraud models use approximately 350 data points to decide almost instantly whether to block a transaction, up from approximately 200 a year earlier, and its credit model turns applicant and transaction details into over 1,000 data points, trained on data from approximately 553 million loans. On September 17, 2026 Affirm put a transformer-based underwriting model live at US checkout: in an A/B test it raised conversion by 1.2 percentage points (3.4% relative) by approving applications the old model declined, within a sub-second latency budget. AdaptAI, opened to merchants in April 2025, personalizes promotions such as 0% APR offers, and the 10-K says a generative AI customer-service chatbot is in use. Toward AI agents, Affirm backed Google's Agent Payments Protocol in October 2025, said in March 2026 it will support Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens, and from May 2026 began rolling out in Google's AI Mode and Gemini. Affirm does not report revenue, volumes or loss rates for any AI product separately. ([Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm), [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000182095325000080/afrm-20250630.htm), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260917918887/en/), [Affirm Tech Blog](https://tech.affirm.com/learning-richer-credit-representations-with-transformers-at-affirm-c774e7c1cea6), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250430451701/en/), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251009636704/en/), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260303380950/en/), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260512751050/en/Affirm-works-with-Google-to-make-AI-shopping-payments-clear-and-simple))

## Where in the Affirm checkout does machine learning make the decision?

One row per step, from Affirm's 10-K filings, releases and engineering blog. Results are Affirm's own measurements.

| Layer | AI or ML system | What the record shows | Date | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Identity and transaction fraud | Fraud models plus rules | After a basic identity check, fraud models use approximately 350 other data points (approximately 200 in the FY2025 10-K) to decide near-instantly whether to block a transaction; ML models and rules also flag transactions for fraud investigators | August 27, 2026 | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm), [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000182095325000080/afrm-20250630.htm) |
| Credit risk on each purchase | Proprietary risk model | Turns key user identifiers and transaction details into over 1,000 data points (over 500 a year earlier), models repayment probability month by month and prices it with term, purchase size, merchant and item | August 27, 2026 | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm), [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000182095325000080/afrm-20250630.htm) |
| Training data | Risk models | Data from approximately 553 million loans to date (approximately 343 million in the FY2025 10-K); new data is regularly used to retrain each model | August 27, 2026 | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm), [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000182095325000080/afrm-20250630.htm) |
| Throughput | Checkout platform | Thousands of checkouts per minute in multiple countries, often relaying underwriting decisions within seconds | August 27, 2026 | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm) |
| New-user underwriting | Transformer plus XGBoost hybrid | Transformer embeddings of credit-report records feed an XGBoost model; +1.2 percentage points (3.4% relative) end-to-end conversion in an A/B test; had to fit a sub-second latency budget | September 17, 2026 | [Affirm Tech Blog](https://tech.affirm.com/learning-richer-credit-representations-with-transformers-at-affirm-c774e7c1cea6), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260917918887/en/) |
| Bank-account signals | Real-time underwriting inputs | Account balances and cash-flow trends for Affirm Card users with a linked bank account or Affirm Money Account; about 12% average lift when purchasing power rises (early results) | January 14, 2026 | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114588934/en/Affirm-updates-underwriting-with-enhanced-signals-to-better-reflect-consumers-real-time-finances) |
| Promotions and offers | AdaptAI | Personalized, real-time promotions and credit offers; nearly 10% incremental conversion on Affirm's own app and card before merchant launch | April 30, 2025 | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250430451701/en/) |
| Customer service | Generative AI chatbot | Used in the customer-service chatbot, with human involvement in training and monitoring of AI tools, per the 10-K | August 27, 2026 | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm) |

## Which partners put Affirm's decisioning inside wallets and AI agents?

Affirm's AI partners are distribution and protocol partners; it builds its risk models in-house. Google Pay and Chrome rows are wallet integrations that predate the agent work.

| Partner | What | Date | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Google Pay and Chrome | Affirm launched on Google Pay in early 2024 and added pay-over-time to autofill on Chrome desktop in the US; Google says people shop on Google more than a billion times per day | August 12, 2025 | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250812196500/en/Affirm-expands-work-with-Google-Pay-integrates-with-autofill-on-Chrome) |
| Google (AP2) | Affirm announced support for the Agent Payments Protocol for agent-led payments | October 9, 2025 | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251009636704/en/) |
| Google (AI Mode and Gemini) | Pay-over-time options rolling out in Google Search, including AI Mode, and the Gemini app when checking out with Google Pay | May 12, 2026 | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260512751050/en/Affirm-works-with-Google-to-make-AI-shopping-payments-clear-and-simple) |
| Stripe | Will soon support Shared Payment Tokens so AI agents can offer Affirm plans without exposing credentials; in June 2026 the companies said they are collaborating on AI-powered commerce as they took the partnership to the UK | 2026 | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260303380950/en/), [PYMNTS](https://www.pymnts.com/bnpl/2026/affirm-launches-uk-bnpl-partnership-with-stripe/) |
| Expedia Group | Exclusive US BNPL provider for lodging and packages; the release says checkout is beginning to show up in AI-powered planning tools like ChatGPT and Affirm is evolving alongside | January 30, 2026 | [Expedia Group and Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260130359644/en/Expedia-Group-and-Affirm-deepen-partnership-with-US-exclusivity-and-plans-for-further-expansion) |
| Anthropic (Claude Code) | Default agentic coding tool for the February 2026 AI Retooling Week; over 60% of pull requests now agent-assisted | April 23, 2026 | [Affirm Tech Blog](https://tech.affirm.com/how-affirm-retooled-its-engineering-organization-for-agentic-software-development-in-one-week-1fd35268fde6) |
| Originating banks | Underwriting is automated under the originating bank partners' and Affirm's direct lending entity's underwriting policies; Celtic Bank and Lead Bank originate substantially all US loans | August 27, 2026 | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm) |

## How does AI fit Affirm's business, and what does it not disclose?

The FY2026 10-K says Affirm's solutions use machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud-based technologies and other modern tools, that it prioritizes building its own technology, and that its risk model has consistently outperformed traditional credit models. It names AdaptAI and Affirm Edge, which embeds pay-over-time into banking and credit union apps, as new products whose development is complex. ([Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm))

The transformer model's engineering post says the model had to keep decisions explainable for declined applicants, so Affirm developed a proprietary attribution algorithm for the hybrid model, and that a next iteration is launching to all users, repeat and new. ([Affirm Tech Blog](https://tech.affirm.com/learning-richer-credit-representations-with-transformers-at-affirm-c774e7c1cea6), [PYMNTS](https://www.pymnts.com/bnpl/2026/exclusive-affirm-rebuilds-underwriting-to-approve-borrowers-a-credit-score-cant-see/))

The 10-K lists the risks: generative AI may create inaccurate, incomplete or misleading outputs or reflect unintended biases, and Affirm names artificial intelligence laws such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act among the regulations it must comply with abroad. ([Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm))

What is not disclosed: revenue or volume from AdaptAI, the share of GMV that comes through AI agents or Google's AI Mode, loss rates for the loans the transformer model added, fraud-loss rates, and how many conversations the chatbot handles. ([Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260917918887/en/), [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260512751050/en/Affirm-works-with-Google-to-make-AI-shopping-payments-clear-and-simple))

## What does the Affirm profile record on this topic?

| Date | Move | Detail | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 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. | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260917918887/en/) |
| 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. | [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059279/afrm-20260630.htm), [Affirm Holdings via SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1820953/000162828026059271/afrm-20260825.htm) |
| 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. | [PYMNTS](https://www.pymnts.com/buy-now-pay-later/2026/affirm-targets-card-networks-with-broader-payments-push/) |
| May 12, 2026 | Affirm payments roll into Google AI Mode and Gemini | Affirm began rolling out its pay-over-time options in Google Search, including AI Mode, and the Gemini app when checking out with Google Pay. | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260512751050/en/Affirm-works-with-Google-to-make-AI-shopping-payments-clear-and-simple) |
| Mar 3, 2026 | Stripe Shared Payment Tokens for AI-agent checkout | Affirm said it will soon support Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens so AI agents can offer Affirm pay-over-time plans at checkout without exposing credentials. | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260303380950/en/) |
| Jan 14, 2026 | Underwriting adds real-time balance and cash-flow signals | Affirm's underwriting began using account balances and cash-flow trends from linked bank accounts for Affirm Card and Affirm Money Account users; early results showed an average lift of about 12% when purchasing power rises. | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114588934/en/Affirm-updates-underwriting-with-enhanced-signals-to-better-reflect-consumers-real-time-finances) |
| Oct 9, 2025 | Affirm backs Google's Agent Payments Protocol | Affirm announced support for Google's AP2, an open protocol for agent-led payments, extending a partnership that already covered Google Pay and Chrome autofill. | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251009636704/en/) |
| 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. | [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/affirm-stock-earnings.html) |
| 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. | [Affirm (Business Wire)](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250430451701/en/) |

## Common questions

### How does Affirm use AI to detect fraud?

Affirm's FY2026 10-K says it first establishes a consumer's identity with basic information, then runs fraud models that use approximately 350 other data points to decide near-instantly whether to block a transaction, up from approximately 200 in the FY2025 10-K. Machine learning models and rules also flag transactions for review by fraud investigators.

### What data does Affirm's underwriting model use?

Per the FY2026 10-K, the risk model turns key user identifiers and transaction details into over 1,000 data points, considers data beyond credit scores such as transaction history and Affirm's own repayment history, and is trained on data from approximately 553 million loans. Since January 2026 it can also use linked bank-account balances and cash-flow trends.

### What did Affirm's transformer model change?

Live from September 17, 2026, it learns from individual credit-report records and feeds those embeddings into an XGBoost model. In an A/B test it raised conversion among eligible new users by 1.2 percentage points, or 3.4% relative, by approving applications the old model declined, and those loans performed better than a comparable expansion under the previous models.

### Can AI shopping agents pay with Affirm?

Affirm is building toward it. It announced support for Google's Agent Payments Protocol in October 2025, said in March 2026 that it will soon support Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens for agent checkouts, and in May 2026 began rolling out in Google Search AI Mode and the Gemini app through Google Pay. It has not disclosed agent-driven volumes.

### Does Affirm use generative AI with customers?

Yes, in customer service. The FY2026 10-K says Affirm currently uses generative AI in its customer-service chatbot, with human involvement in training and monitoring of its AI tools, and warns that generative AI may produce inaccurate or biased outputs. AdaptAI personalizes promotions, but Affirm describes it as AI-powered rather than generative.
## Deeper on Affirm

- [What is Affirm's role in the digital payments transformation?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/fintech/affirm/digital-payments-transformation)
- [How does Affirm use AI to make credit decisions?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/fintech/affirm/credit-decisioning-ai)

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