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Amazon, Affirm unveil 'buy now, pay later' partnership

It's a big boost for Affirm, which has been trying to diversify into a broader set of merchants.

Amazon logo on a building

Amazon and Affirm announced a partnership to offer consumers "buy now, pay later" options.

Photo: Yender Gonzalez

Amazon customers will soon be able to use Affirm's "buy now, pay later" service at checkout in a new partnership unveiled by the tech companies on Friday.

Amazon and Affirm said they have begun testing the new feature, which would make Affirm the first pay-over-time option at checkout on Amazon. Amazon and Citi have a partnership for Citi cardholders that works slightly differently, charging the full amount to the card but allowing payment over time at a lower interest rate.

The new feature would allow Amazon customers to split the cost of purchases worth $50 or more into monthly payments. Approved customers "will never pay more than what they agree to at checkout," Affirm said in a statement.

The test could take months before the feature is made available to all consumers. Currently, Amazon customers are able to use Affirm through the Affirm app, which creates a one-time-use virtual card used for payment.

Affirm has a similar partnership with Shopify. In June, Affirm unveiled one of the biggest BNPL rollouts in the U.S. when it made its service available to Shopify merchants.

Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.

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