Affirm (NASDAQ:AFRM) used its 2026 Investor Forum at Nasdaq in New York to outline a broader growth strategy centered on its payments network, expanding consumer products, international markets and a new medium-term financial framework tied to reaching $100 billion in annual gross merchandise volume.
Zane Keller, Affirm’s Head of Investor Relations, opened the event by noting that the company would discuss five medium-term growth drivers, up from three at its prior forum. The presentation included remarks from executives across product, revenue, finance and risk, as well as partner representatives from Stripe, Fiserv, Old National Bank and Shopify.
Levchin Emphasizes Network Effects
Max Levchin said the central message for investors is that Affirm has built “a network” that is closed loop and information preserving, with the company serving as issuer, acquirer, credit information transmitter and risk manager. He said Affirm is showing “very real network effects” as more merchants, consumers and capital partners participate.
Levchin said Affirm is now available in more than 500,000 online checkouts, while the Affirm Card allows use offline as well. He said the company has underwritten 70 million Americans and has 27 million active consumers over the past 12 months. Affirm also has 15 million monthly users in its app, which Levchin described as a growing marketing surface for retailers.
Levchin highlighted what he called the “Affirm effect,” saying fully integrated merchants typically see a 30% increase in online conversion, while some merchants can see average order value increase materially. He also said Affirm has not charged late fees and “never will,” adding that credit risk remains central to the business.
Executives Detail Risk, Data and AI Advantages
Michael and Libor discussed what they described as structural advantages, including transaction-level underwriting, Affirm’s data asset, model operations and infrastructure scale. Libor said Affirm’s underwriting model enables more accurate risk evaluation and real-time pricing because each transaction is evaluated individually.
Libor said Affirm has seen $150 billion in volume and 2.3 billion repayments over 14 years, giving the company a larger data set for training models. He said Affirm is now working with transformer-based artificial intelligence models that are outperforming existing models in experiments and are expected to become a new baseline for underwriting performance.
The executives also said the company handled peaks of 4,000 checkouts and 14,000 app opens per minute during the most recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday period.
Growth Drivers Include Card, Wallets, Agentic Commerce and Banks
Wayne Pommen, Affirm’s Chief Revenue Officer, said merchant point of sale remains the foundation of the business, accounting for 76% of transactions in the most recent quarter. He said point-of-sale volume has grown 32% annually over the past three years, and Affirm added 157,000 merchants over the past 12 months.
Pommen said Affirm has integrated with 75 of the top 250 U.S. e-commerce and travel merchants, leaving 175 still not integrated. However, he said Affirm generated $3.3 billion of GMV over the past 12 months from those non-integrated merchants through direct-to-consumer channels.
Vishal Kapoor, Affirm’s Chief Product Officer and Head of Products, said the Affirm Card now has 4.4 million active cardholders, who spend $2,400 annually on the card on average. He said cardholder spend is growing 130% year over year and that cardholders spend three times more across Affirm than non-cardholders. Kapoor said Affirm sees a path to 20 million active cardholders and $150 billion in annual total cardholder spend over the longer term.
Kapoor also said Affirm’s wallet partnerships have generated $1.7 billion in trailing 12-month GMV from 2.3 million customers, with 155% year-over-year growth. He said 80% of that wallet volume came from merchants that are not directly integrated with Affirm.
Kapoor said Affirm is also positioning itself for agentic commerce, citing partnerships or work with Google, Stripe and Shopify. He said Affirm’s transparent financing and purchasing power tools can be used in AI-driven shopping experiences, including through Gemini and partners such as Priceline, Nectar and Newegg.
Affirm also introduced Affirm Edge, a product intended to bring Affirm’s buy now, pay later capabilities into bank and credit union apps. Pommen said the company sees a $140 billion annual addressable volume opportunity in debit-first consumers who prefer mobile banking. Representatives from Fiserv and Old National Bank discussed the potential for banks to offer BNPL through existing debit relationships.
International Expansion Continues With Shopify
Pat Suh, Senior Vice President of Revenue, said more than $5 trillion of e-commerce and travel spend occurs outside North America. He said Affirm’s exclusive partnership with Shopify to launch in Australia, Germany, France and the Netherlands, along with European Union markets, opens more than $1.7 trillion of addressable total addressable market.
Suh said Affirm’s Canadian merchant count grew 7x to 26,000 merchants in 12 months after launching with Shopify in April 2025. In the U.K., he said Affirm reached 10,000 active merchants and 260,000 users within a couple of quarters after launching with Shopify in September 2025.
Affirm Raises Medium-Term Financial Targets
Rob O’Hare, Affirm’s Chief Financial Officer, said the company has generated more than $46 billion in GMV over the past 12 months, with revenue compounding at 40% annually over the past three years. He said adjusted operating margin reached 28% over the past 12 months.
O’Hare said Affirm is now focused internally on reaching $100 billion in annual GMV. As it moves toward that scale, the company expects GMV to grow at least 25% annually, with more than 10 percentage points of growth from merchant point of sale, more than 10 percentage points from direct-to-consumer offerings such as Affirm Card and wallets, and 1 to 5 percentage points from international expansion. Affirm Edge and agentic commerce were described as additional upside outside the 25% target.
At $100 billion in annual GMV, Affirm outlined the following medium-term targets:
- Revenue as a percentage of GMV of 7.5% to 8.5%.
- Revenue less transaction costs as a percentage of GMV of 3.75% to 4%.
- GAAP operating margin of 20% to 25%.
- Adjusted operating margin of 30% to 35%.
- GAAP earnings per share of $3 to $4.
John Marion, who said he will be President of Affirm Bank once approved, said the proposed industrial bank would add high-yield savings deposits as a funding source and operate alongside Affirm’s existing bank partners. He said Affirm submitted its application in January and expects the bank to originate 40% to 50% of Affirm’s loan volume by the end of the de novo period, while holding approximately 10% of those originated loans to maturity.
Marion said Affirm expects to invest about $20 million in fiscal 2027 to build the bank and make an initial capital contribution of approximately $350 million. He said the company is targeting roughly 20% return on equity for the bank by the end of the de novo period.
About Affirm (NASDAQ:AFRM)
Affirm Holdings, Inc is a financial technology company that provides point-of-sale consumer lending and payments solutions for online and in-store purchases. Its core product is a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platform that enables consumers to split purchases into fixed, transparent installment loans with no hidden fees. Affirm offers a range of financing options through merchant integrations, a consumer-facing mobile app and virtual card capabilities, and tools for merchants to offer alternative payment methods at checkout.
This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to contact@marketbeat.com.
Where Should You Invest $1,000 Right Now?
Before you make your next trade, you'll want to hear this.
MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis.
Our team has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and none of the big name stocks were on the list.
They believe these five stocks are the five best companies for investors to buy now...
The article "Affirm Maps Road to $100B GMV With Card, AI Commerce and Global Expansion" first appeared on MarketBeat.
