CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Annual Report on Form 10-K ("Form 10-K"), as well as information included in oral statements or other written statements made or to be made by us, contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this report, including statements regarding our future results of operations and financial condition, business strategy, and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "design," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "potentially," "predict," "project," "should," "will," “would,” or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning the following:
•our expectations regarding our future revenue, expenses, and other operating results and key operating metrics;
•our ability to attract additional merchants and retain and grow our relationships with our existing merchant partners;
•our ability to compete successfully in a highly competitive industry;
•our ability to attract new consumers and retain and grow our relationships with our existing consumers;
•our expectations regarding product launches;
•our ability to successfully engage new originating bank partners;
•the availability of funding sources to support our business model;
•our ability to effectively price and score credit risk using our proprietary risk model;
•the performance of loans facilitated through our platform;
•the future growth rate of our revenue and related key operating metrics;
•our ability to achieve or sustain profitability in the future;
•our ability to remain in compliance with laws and regulations that currently apply or become applicable to our business;
•our ability to protect our confidential, proprietary, or sensitive information;
•past and future acquisitions, investments, and other strategic investments;
•our ability to maintain, protect, and enhance our brand and intellectual property;
•litigation, investigations, regulatory inquiries, and proceedings;
•the impact of macroeconomic conditions on our business, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; and
•the size and growth rates of the markets in which we compete.
Forward-looking statements are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including risks described in the section titled "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in this Form 10-K. Other sections of this Form 10-K may include additional factors that could harm our business and financial performance. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risk factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for our management to predict all risk factors nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ from those contained in, or implied by, any forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, achievements, events, or circumstances. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this report or to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations. You should read this Form 10-K and the documents that we have filed as exhibits to this report with the understanding that our actual future results, levels of activity, performance, and achievements may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.
In addition, statements such as “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this report, and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain and you are cautioned not to unduly rely upon these statements.
Investors and others should note that we may announce material business and financial information to our investors using our investor relations website (investors.affirm.com), our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, webcasts, press releases, and conference calls. We use these mediums, including our website, to communicate with investors and the general public about our company, our products, and other issues. It is possible that the information that we make available on our website may be deemed to be material information. We therefore encourage investors and others interested in our company to review the information that we make available on our website. The contents of our website are not incorporated into this filing. We have included our investor relations website address only as an inactive textual reference and do not intend it to be an active link to our website.
PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Company Overview
Affirm was founded in 2012 with a mission to deliver honest financial products that improve lives. We are building the next generation platform for digital and mobile-first commerce. We believe that by using modern technology, strong engineering talent, and a mission-driven approach, we can reinvent payments and commerce. Our solutions, which are built on trust and transparency, are designed to make it easier for consumers to spend responsibly and with confidence, easier for merchants to convert sales and grow, and easier for commerce to thrive.
Our Business
Legacy payment options, archaic systems, and traditional risk and credit underwriting models can be harmful, deceptive, and restrictive to both consumers and merchants. We believe that they are not well-suited for increasingly digital and mobile-first commerce, and are built on legacy infrastructure that does not support the innovation required for modern commerce to evolve and flourish. Our platform is designed to address these problems.
We believe our innovative approach, based on trust and steadfast commitment to our core values, uniquely positions us to define the future of commerce and payments. Our company is predicated on the principles of simplicity, transparency, and putting people first. Since our founding, we have charged $0 in late fees for missed payments, we never profit from consumers’ mistakes, and we are transparent in our product offerings. By adhering to these principles, we have built enduring, trust-based relationships with consumers and merchants that we believe will set us up for long-term, sustainable success.
We believe that technology, underwriting, and risk management are collectively our key competitive advantage. We believe our proprietary technology platform and data give us a unique advantage in understanding customers and merchants, as well as pricing risk — which we can almost always accomplish within seconds at checkout. Our approach to risk management is core to our business model, and has been proven to lead to low fraud rates, higher approval rates compared to traditional credit underwriting models, and low credit losses. Our models have been built on more than one billion data points, including data from over 30 million loans and over seven years of repayments. Furthermore, our risk management models are designed to continuously improve over time, becoming more precise and efficient with each transaction powered by our platform.
What this means for consumers is increased purchasing power and more control and flexibility. As of June 30, 2021, over 10 million consumers have trusted Affirm to pay over time. By utilizing our unique risk model predicated on sophisticated machine learning algorithms, proprietary data, and product-level underwriting, we can serve consumers across the credit spectrum and price risk across transaction types. Consumers on our platform represent a broad cross-section of society, with sizable geographic representation across the United States (“U.S.”) and Canada.
For merchants, Affirm's commerce solutions help drive growth by enhancing demand generation and customer acquisition. Our platform is explicitly designed and engineered to integrate with a wide range of merchants. This is a point of differentiation for Affirm, and we can accommodate and partner with merchants regardless of industry, size, average order value (“AOV”), or customer profile. As of June 30, 2021, we had approximately 29,000 merchants integrated on our platform, including several thousand integrated through our partnership with Shopify Inc. (“Shopify”), ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, direct-to-consumer brands, brick-and-mortar stores, and companies with omni-channel presences. Our merchants span a diverse range of industries, including sporting goods and outdoors, furniture and homewares, travel, apparel, accessories, consumer electronics, and jewelry.
Our business model is designed to align with the interests of both consumers and merchants — we win when they win.
From merchants, we typically earn a fee when we help them convert a sale and power a payment. Merchant fees depend on the individual arrangement between us and each merchant and vary based on the terms of the product offering; we generally earn larger merchant fees on 0% annual percentage rate (“APR”) financing products. For both the fiscal years ended June 30, 2021 and 2020, 0% APR financing represented 43% of total Gross Merchandise Volume (“GMV”) facilitated through our platform. This structure incentivizes us to help our merchants convert sales and increase AOV through the commerce and technology solutions offered by our platform.
From consumers, we earn interest income on the simple interest loans that we purchase from our originating bank partners. Interest rates charged to our consumers vary depending on the transaction risk, creditworthiness of the consumer, the repayment term selected by the consumer, the amount of the loan, and the individual arrangement with a merchant. Because consumers are never charged deferred or compounding interest, late fees, or penalties on the loans, we are not incentivized to profit from our consumers’ mistakes or misfortunes.
In order to accelerate our ubiquity, we facilitate the issuance of virtual cards directly to consumers through our app, allowing them to shop with merchants that may not yet be fully integrated with Affirm. When these virtual cards are used over established card networks, we earn a portion of the interchange fee from the transaction.
We have already achieved significant scale, facilitating consumer purchases of $8.3 billion in GMV in fiscal year 2021, and we are just getting started.
Our Platform
Our platform comprises three core elements: a point-of-sale payment solution for consumers, merchant commerce solutions, and a consumer-focused app.
•Consumer Point-Of Sale Solutions. Our point-of-sale solutions allow consumers to pay for purchases over time in fixed amounts without deferred interest, hidden fees, or penalties. With our 0% APR payment options, consumers pay zero interest and zero additional costs. On the interest bearing loans we facilitate, we charge simple interest, which means consumers pay fixed amounts of interest that they agree to up front, and the interest never compounds. We believe in treating people fairly, which is why consumers never pay more than what was agreed to at checkout, even if they miss a payment.