Affirm Guarantees

This project had a straightforward objective: take Affirm's well-established native mobile experience and bring it to the web. In the native app, users prequalify with Affirm up to a given amount and can, at any time, generate a one-time-use virtual card to spend at the merchant of their choice. On the surface it looks like a digital credit card; under the hood it behaves like a traditional point-of-sale installment loan — the same as using Affirm at checkout on Walmart, Expedia, or Wayfair.

Onboarding into a guaranteed amount

The first step was the onboarding experience. Not anyone can sign up and take out a loan — a user first has to prequalify so we can determine how much to extend as their guaranteed amount to spend. What does the experience look like if they haven't prequalified yet? How do we make it clear and approachable? What if they get declined? Getting those edge cases right was important.

Continuity across every checkout

We wanted to reuse as much of the existing virtual-card experience as possible. Working with engineering teams across our consumer and retail groups to keep continuity across all of these checkout flows was critical. We delivered a near-identical experience across the web, with the bonus of reusing the same modal to reduce engineering lift — a big win for both Affirm and our users.

Bringing Offers along

Finally, we brought the recently launched Offers product to the web. For people who wanted to shop wherever they liked, they had an open, guaranteed amount to spend. For those who wanted to take advantage of special interest-free merchant offers, we brought that native experience to the web too.

This was a truly cross-functional project spanning credit, product, design, and engineering. It provided an immediate bump to our overall loan volume, offered an entirely new experience for people who'd never downloaded the app, and served as a great onboarding bridge between our point-of-sale merchant customers and our native mobile experience.