Affirm, an online lender that helped popularize the “buy now, pay later” business model before moving deeper into banking, just became the latest fintech company to hop on the bitcoin bandwagon.
In an investor presentation Tuesday night, Affirm CEO Max Levchin said his company is working on a feature that will let consumers “buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly from their savings account.”
“It’s time for Affirm to support cryptocurrencies in a way that feels organic to us,” Levchin said, during the two-hour presentation. “That’s right. We will soon leverage our savings accounts to seamlessly enable crypto ownership.”
Affirm did not provide a timeframe for the release. The company included a deck with its presentation, and had one slide that said “New and coming soon” followed by “Crypto.” The slide showed an image of the Affirm mobile app, with “Bitcoin holdings” underneath the savings account.
Affirm is competing in a crowded market, as online lenders, mobile investing apps and crypto exchanges try to lure younger consumers. While the emerging fintech companies started with niche offerings, they’re all trying to bring more banking and financial services to people who are loathe to go to physical branches and expect products to have simple user interfaces.
Just this week, Coinbase rolled out a new function that allows users to get paid in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by enabling direct deposit of paychecks into Coinbase accounts. PayPal, SoFi, Chime, and Robinhood each offer crypto-related services to go along with their core products.
Earlier this summer, Upgrade, a provider of affordable credit to mainstream consumers, introduced a feature that lets users earn unlimited 1.5% bitcoin rewards on every purchase using their Upgrade credit card.
Affirm shares rose less than 1% to $115.50 on Wednesday. The company has more than doubled in value since its IPO in January.
