Affirm Holdings (AFRM) is riding a wave of renewed investor interest, buoyed by its latest earnings, merchant integrations, and buzz around Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). In a world where fintech startups are many but dominant survivors are few, Affirm sits in the crosshairs of both excitement and skepticism. Its recent earnings beat, gross merchandise volume growth, and strategic moves command attention.
Recently making headlines is Affirm’sexpanded partnership with Alphabet (GOOGL) by joining the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) initiative, an open, “payment-agnostic” system developed with major tech and payment players to support secure, agent-led payments across platforms. This collaboration builds on Affirm’s existing integrations with Google Pay and Chrome’s autofill.
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Through AP2, Affirm aims to embed its BNPL technology directly into the next generation of digital commerce, spanning wallets, browsers, chatbots, andartificial intelligence (AI) agents. The company’s real-time assessment and transparency align with the protocol’s goals of trust, flexibility, and security in payments. Both firms emphasized that the partnership marks a key step toward open, scalable, and responsible digital payment ecosystems.
Amid the current hype, should you buy, sell or hold AFRM stock? Let’s dig deeper.
Affirm is a fintech company that builds a payment network focused on consumer financing and merchant tools. Affirm enables BNPL options, letting consumers split purchases into installments with transparent terms. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the firm also offers a merchant commerce platform and integrates with a variety of digital and point-of-sale channels. Affirm currently has a market capitalization of $22.1 billion.
Over the past 52 weeks, AFRM stock has staged a remarkable rebound,up 62%, underscoring how strongly investor sentiment has swung back toward high-growth fintech plays. On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, the stock has also delivered solid gains of 18% as markets look for growth stories in the digital payments and BNPL space. In the more recent stretch, the announcement of adeeper collaboration with Google around its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) has acted as a fresh catalyst, fueling a pronounced uptick in trading volume. AFRM stock closed up by 6% on Oct. 20.
