Affirm co-founder and CEO Max Levchin explains the current scale and geographic reach of Affirm's consumer network.
Opinion
Levchin: Point-of-sale credit cards with deferred interest are borderline evil
“There's a sort of an implicit indictment of the larger banks that do what's known as point of sale issued credit cards, which is, you know, some are borderline evil product because they give you a zero percent financing unless you miss the first payment, at wh…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levchin: Modern fintechs will replace traditional banks for direct deposits
“There's definitely going to be several probably winners that take the spot in your brain that belongs to Wells Fargo for your parents, the sort of a place where your money goes into a direct deposit account of some sort that takes care of your billing mostly a…”
Prediction Held up
Levchin: Affirm does not charge late fees to consumers
“And if you're late, we're not going to charge you a late fee because that's our fault. We didn't remind you correctly. And when we made the underwriting decision, we made the choice to take you on as a risk and that that's, we're going to have to stick with.”
Insight
Levchin: Internal transaction data outperforms social data in risk models
“The most valuable data is not social data, not what you eat for lunch, not even debt to income ratio, even though that's fairly predictive, but your own data, because every data set that you're looking at internally Describes your own process, including your b…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levchin: A properly launched new credit card initially loses 50% of volume
“One of the things that happens for a brand new launched credit card Done right, you lose about 50% of the dollar volume in the first several months, which is terrifying because it's half the money, literally.”
Insight
Levchin: Banks fail with millennials due to brand identity, not tech
“Finally, I think the smarter ones of these banks kind of recognize that an impediment to their forays into the millennial demographic in particular is not lack of technology or lack of the right product. It's actually who they are.”