That old credit card that you’re used to? Yeah, it’s out the door. The revolution is here, and now there’s a new tool to help millennials live life on their terms.
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A PayPal cofounder, Max Levchin, is at the helm of this lender. Its ubiquity helps it to take on this challenge in ways that a lot of traditional companies may not want to attempt.
It’s not about Building Credit
The purpose of this product is to help millennials buy products and services that they want. Affirm claims to make it a more affordable process, and also an easier process because it’s not your typical credit application.
Their secret sauce seems to be that they have figured out what millennials value. Affirm believes that millennials are less likely to default on paying for certain types of purchases.
Flexible Credit Terms
Credit cards are notorious for compounding interest, and a new breed of loan products are offering another option. For anyone who slept in math class, you might learn the hard way that it’s no fun to pay interest on the interest. Affirm loans offer a simplified approach, and a set term to repay any given loan.
Millennials appear to be gun-shy about credit, but this could be an attractive option for greater and greater numbers of them.
Will this Work?
It isn’t only the founders of Affirm who believe in this new way of doing business. They have convinced Wall Street heavyweight, Morgan Stanley, to give them $100 million to expand this social experiment.
I, for one, am happy to see that there are companies willing to try a new model to do business. What I like best: temptation is limited. These loans are simple, time-bound, and less likely to put millennials at risk of long-term debt service.