The Online payment service Affirm Inc. enabled the company’s financing options to be available to all U.S-based Shopify stores.
This Thursday, Shopify and Affirm Inc. announced a partnership that will enable Bitcoin users to have access to financing options for purchases. While Affirm’s financing options have already been available to select Shopify stores, including Boosted Boards, this last announcement rolls out the feature to all merchants on the platform.
Affirm. Inc., was launched by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin in 2012, and previously raised about $50 million in a Series A funding round.
In terms of actual implementation, store owners just have to opt into the payment option, similar to how Shopify lets merchants accept Bitcoin.
Financing Options Now Open to Bitcoin Enthusiasts
Shopify is a leading online shop builder that enables its clients to choose between several payment methods, including bitcoin. The online shop builder is currently powering over 175,000 online shops and has helped businesses process over $10 billion worth of sales. Shopify, focuses on making commerce better for everyone, so businesses can deliver their best: building and selling their products. Currently, a lot of merchants use the Shopify platform to manage every aspect of their business. From a team of 5 to a team of over 500 workers the company has grown to become one of the most stable companies in the ecosystem.
With this partnership, store owners will also be able to choose how many installments will be available in customer’s payment plans. The company explained that this is because different item categories traditionally have different payment plan lengths. For example, customers normally prefer to pay off clothing in a shorter period of time than an item like a laptop or cell phone.
It seems that the existing merchants have experienced a 30 percent increase in sales after using the company’s platform to offer financing to customers. The company is also seeing repeat purchases from 36 percent of Affirm users, which shows how valuable the new integration could be to Shopify merchants.
While an installment payment option may not make sense for stores that sell items with low retail values, an option like Affirm could be a very good choice for retailers that sell higher-priced items like jewelry or expensive electronics.
Besides enlarging the range of shops in which bitcoin can now be used, this partnership is also a proof that bitcoin is increasingly becoming a trustable medium of exchange.
UPDATE: The Affirm Head of Marketing Ed Lin , explained that “Affirm does not currently accept Bitcoin as a method of repayment for its consumer loans. The Affirm partnership with Shopify allows Shopify merchants to offer Affirm point-of-sale financing to their shoppers. Shoppers on Shopify merchant sites that offer Affirm can use Affirm’s installment financing to make purchases now and pay for them over time. This new partnership in no way facilitates Bitcoin users to use Bitcoins to transact on Shopify merchant sites“. This a sad overturn for what was expected to be the first financing options on the ecosystem. further developments, will be updated.