But that’s not an accident,” Max Levchin, Affirm’s CEO and a co-founder of PayPal, told CNN in a recent interview. Levchin credits a willingness to say a two-letter word, one that’s not exactly associated with the surging BNPL industry, N-O. It’s that we are honest when we tell them, ‘Hey, we don’t think you should borrow right now.’”Affirm started saying “no” more often in the spring of 2022. That’s when Levchin started observing signs of “financial stress” as inflation surged and gas prices approached record highs. “Say you’re asking to borrow to buy an $800 TV and we really don’t think it’s healthy for you, financially…We can say, ‘That’s too much now.

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