The Business Model Behind Affirm - An Honest Credit Card Alternative

Wayne Pommen is the Chief Revenue Officer at Affirm, North America's leading buy now pay later company. Before that, he was the CEO and builder of PayBright — Canada's first BNPL company — which he grew from 6 employees to 200 before it was acquired by Affirm in 2021. Today Affirm serves 27 million active consumers and processes close to $50 billion a year in purchases across the US, Canada, and the UK.

In this conversation at Startwell during Toronto Tech Week, Wayne breaks down how he stumbled into fintech through a healthcare financing company, why the Canadian banking market is structurally different from the US, how the pandemic turned out to be a massive accelerant for the business, and why he thinks the credit card industry is fundamentally misaligned with consumers.

He also gets into Affirm's global expansion, what it's like running revenue at a publicly traded fintech, and his perspective on the Canadian tech ecosystem and what it needs to do to keep its best talent.

*Topics: buy now pay later, fintech, consumer credit, PayBright, Affirm, Canadian banking, e-commerce, startup acquisition, Max Levchin, Toronto tech scene

CHAPTERS 00:00 – Intro & who is Wayne Pommen 01:00 – What is Affirm and how does it work? 04:00 – How Canada's banking market differs from the US 07:00 – The origin story: from healthcare financing to PayBright 13:00 – Launching Canada's first BNPL e-commerce product 19:00 – Crazy growth: 25 to 200 people in three years 23:00 – How the pandemic changed everything 29:00 – The Affirm acquisition story 35:00 – Life inside a publicly traded US fintech 41:00 – Why credit cards are misaligned with consumers 48:00 – Affirm's global expansion 55:00 – The future of consumer credit 01:02:00 – Canada's tech ecosystem and brain drain