Affirm Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: AFRM)

Affirm Holdings, Inc., or Affirm, operates under the ticker symbol AFRM, providing financial products and services to consumers and merchants with a focus on digital and mobile-first commerce. The company's primary business activities include offering installment loans, Pay-in-4, a short-term payment plan, and Core loans, which include monthly interest-bearing and 0% APR installment loans. Affirm also provides a high-yield savings account and a virtual card for consumers. Merchant services include Affirm at Checkout, pay-over-time options, and 0% APR financing.

The company generates revenue through various means, such as merchant fees, interest income on installment loans, and interchange fees for transactions facilitated through its platform. Affirm's proprietary risk model assesses consumer creditworthiness at a transaction level, providing a unique advantage over traditional credit systems.

Affirm competes favorably against legacy payment methods like credit and debit cards, technology solutions from payment companies like Visa and MasterCard, and other pay-over-time solutions from companies like Block and Klarna. Strong network effects, improved direct expense efficiency, data advantages that compound over time, and better outcomes generated by its proprietary risk models set Affirm apart from its competitors.

The consumer segment is crucial for Affirm, with a diverse consumer base of over 36 million people trusting the company as their transaction partner. The company's merchant segment includes a range of solutions, such as Affirm at Checkout, enabling merchants to offer pay-over-time options and 0% APR financing. Affirm's merchant dashboard provides valuable insights and analytics to help merchants optimize their sales and customer acquisition strategies.

Affirm's growth strategy aims to create even greater value for consumers and merchants by expanding solutions for both parties, innovating new consumer product solutions, increasing consumer transaction frequency, expanding consumer reach, and deepening penetration with existing merchants. The company's technology-driven platform offers a seamless checkout experience and assesses risk at a transaction level, providing a unique advantage over traditional credit systems.

Affirm's products are built on a cloud-first platform that aggregates, schematizes, manages, and decides on temporally agnostic data. The company's vertically integrated technology powers a rich data landscape across products, driving increased efficiency and scale. Affirm regularly updates its models using new data, which allows it to improve its risk assessment and pricing capabilities, offering competitive pricing to consumers and merchants while reducing risk exposure.

The company is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, with various initiatives and policies in place to promote these values as it scales and builds a high-performing team. Affirm operates in a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, subject to extensive regulation in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and various states and provinces. The company is also subject to licensing requirements, supervision, and examination by applicable regulatory authorities.