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Max Levchin

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman, Affirm Holdings

Search every verified Max Levchin interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Max Levchin, founder and CEO of Affirm Holdings, announced a multi-year agreement with Sam's Club in October 2026, making Affirm the retailer's exclusive buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) provider. The deal will launch on Sam's Club's website in the coming weeks and expand to physical stores in 2027. Levchin described the partnership as exciting and noted that the rollout timeline reflects the added complexity of in-store integration, including signage and staff training. He also discussed a partnership with Crate & Barrel in October, emphasizing Affirm's 0% APR options and its policy of not charging late fees or compound interest. In August and September 2026, Levchin appeared on multiple financial news programs following Affirm's Q4 fiscal year 2026 earnings, which included strong revenue growth and a raised forecast. He described the Affirm consumer as healthy and said he saw no signs of a recession, while acknowledging that sustained price pressures are a concern. Levchin also discussed the company's rollout of a new AI-based underwriting model, which he said analyzes credit history and narrative notes to approve more borrowers while maintaining loss levels. He stated that Affirm has not laid off staff to fund AI initiatives and expressed optimism about AI's role in payments, though he said he is less confident about agentic shopping.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“Probably the right place to start is actually what does consumer pay? So the major difference between Affirm and credit cards is every transaction with Affirm is entirely separate. It's a decision. We underwrite every transaction. We tell you very transparently, we think the answer is yes. We believe this is the right amount of money for you to borrow. If there's an interest rate attached to the transaction, and ther”

“I'm going to make a bold claim. Affirm for agents will... I know it's risky. I know what I'm saying. No, I happen to agree with you. I think there are definitely many really cool exciting developments in agentic AI. I am trying out all the same agents myself. Some of them are surprisingly good. Some of them are still lumbering through the same problems you see with some of the earlier attempts. But it's very clear th”

“We are a buy-now-pay-later specialist financial services company. We've been underwriting building underwriting models for 15 years. We have petabytes of data that we train on, so we've been an ML specialist for a very long time. But up until recently, we primarily stuck to tree-based models. They're deterministic, they're easier to audit, they're easier to explain to the regulators we have to do every year. And so a”

“I'm probably less optimistic about agentic shopping and I'm very optimistic about agentic payments. The notion of robots will buy our Friday night outfits is misguided. We want to know what we look like long before the robot delivers it to your door. But I think the friction, this notion of so the best user interface ever created is the credit card. This may actually be finally up for renegotiation because agents are”

“The card payment interface is the singular best user interface ever created. And it's not something that people haven't tried to do better. Remember even before PayPal, there was this wand that I think Mastercard and one of the gas refueling station networks produced this thing where you could like wave this wand next to a gas station and payment is secured and you can fuel your car. And when I saw it, I'm like, 'Oh ”

“I think there's still strong demands there's you know there's there's nothing profoundly wrong. Let me start with that. I do think that sustained pressure on prices isn't great in the long term and so can't ignore that either.”

Other executives at Affirm Holdings

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