Affirm Offers

My contributions

I was the sole designer on Affirm's direct-to-consumer product, Affirm Offers. That process included user research, multiple phases of white-boarding and in-house prototyping, a successful pilot launch, developing asset-management workflows for hundreds of merchants, and ultimately our public launch in the Affirm iOS and Android apps.

A product built on shared value

Affirm's core mission is to deliver honest financial products that improve people's lives. In every loan Affirm issues there are three important stakeholders: merchants who have goods and services to sell, borrowers looking to make a purchase, and Affirm itself. Merchants happily pay a small fee for increased conversion and order value; users pay a small amount of interest for access to credit they might not otherwise have; and Affirm earns revenue to keep innovating.

This works incredibly well for most — but for some users, we thought Affirm could do even better. So we created Affirm Offers, centered on a select group of merchants where consumers could shop nearly interest-free, and in many cases with no interest at all. It turns out many merchants have economics that let them “cover the interest” for the customer. For the user it's a no-brainer: they save on interest and can smooth purchases over time, without fear of the retroactive interest that accompanies most “too good to be true” offers.

Insights that shaped the experience

The design and research teams studied how consumers made past considered purchases, and how they planned to make them in the future. A few insights shaped the product you see:

Sometimes customers have a specific merchant in mind — they know they want a Sonos speaker and want to know if Affirm has partnered with Sonos. So we positioned search right at the top. Merchants would gladly pay for premium visibility, so we created a Featured section that let us monetize personalization by predicting where you might want to shop. Many considered purchases happen around life events — holidays, getaways, a new home, a new family member — so we created curated collections we called plans, projects, and surprises. And sometimes people just want to hunt for a good deal the “old way,” so we rounded out the experience with familiar categories to browse.

In classic Affirm fashion, the experience was well received by all three parties: users who could find merchants that fit their needs at exceptionally low rates, merchants who could be showcased by category and by life event, and Affirm — for the privilege of continuing to deliver on its mission.