Exclusive: Affirm goes big on BigCommerce

Affirm has struck a partnership with BigCommerce, making it the preferred BNPL option on the e-commerce platform’s merchant checkout pages.

Why it matters: The competition between BNPL providers will likely be won by the company that is on as many checkout pages as possible. Affirm is taking the lead through partnerships with retailers, payment processors and e-commerce platforms.

What’s happening: Through the partnership, BigCommerce will recommend Affirm’s adaptive checkout option through its merchant dashboard.

How it works: Adaptive checkout lets consumers choose between making zero-interest, bi-weekly payments or spreading their payouts out over longer-term, monthly plans.

• In either case, merchants get paid upfront for the cost of the transaction (minus fees), while Affirm takes on the risk of non-payment or default.

Context: This is just the latest in a string of strategic partnerships Affirm has struck over the past year.

• According to its most recent earnings report in May, the number of active merchants offering Affirm as a checkout option rose to 207,000 from 12,000 a year earlier — primarily through its partnership with Shopify.

Yes, but: Those results don’t include the impact of more recent deals with payment giants Stripe, Fiserv, and Verifone.

What they’re saying: “What this really represents is our ability to access millions of consumers and hundreds of thousands of merchants to drive our expansion,” Geoff Kott, chief revenue officer at Affirm, tells Axios.

• For BigCommerce, VP of business development Mark Rosales says offering Affirm as an option leads to "higher average order values and more GMV going through our merchants' checkout."