Affirm
American "buy now, pay later" founded by a PayPal veteran, built around installments with no penalty fees.
Founded in 2012 in San Francisco by Max Levchin, one of the founders behind PayPal. The product is checkout installments: instead of a credit card with revolving interest, the buyer gets a fixed repayment plan with no late fees and the interest spelled out up front. Each purchase is underwritten on its own.
It went public in 2021 and struck major partnerships with Amazon, Shopify, Walmart and later Apple Pay. It belongs to the BNPL wave alongside Klarna and Afterpay — a model that thrived under zero interest rates and met much harsher terms once money started costing something again.