What Happened?
Shares of buy now, pay later company Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM) jumped 6% in the afternoon session after it partnered with the digital sports platform Fanatics to offer its buy now, pay later (BNPL) options to millions of sports fans.
The collaboration allowed shoppers to purchase team jerseys, collectibles, and other merchandise across more than 180 Fanatics team and league stores and pay in biweekly or monthly installments. This deal, announced as holiday shopping and major sports events approached, was expected to boost Affirm's transaction volumes during peak seasons. The stock's rise also occurred amid broader positive news for the BNPL sector. Competitor Zip upgraded its U.S. transaction volume forecast after a strong start to its financial year, signaling healthy demand in the market. Additionally, reports noted robust growth in the overall BNPL industry, reinforcing positive investor sentiment.
The shares closed the day at $72.08, up 6.2% from previous close.
Is now the time to buy Affirm? Access our full analysis report here.
What Is The Market Telling Us
Affirm’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 54 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 11 days ago when the stock gained 1.8% as the company announced it extended its collaboration with Google by supporting the new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). This open protocol was developed to securely handle payments led by agents, such as AI assistants or chatbots, across different platforms. The move deepened Affirm's existing partnership with Google, which already included integrations with Google Pay and the autofill feature in Chrome. This collaboration aimed to embed Affirm's buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options directly into these emerging agent-led shopping experiences.
Affirm is up 15.8% since the beginning of the year, but at $72.40 per share, it is still trading 21.5% below its 52-week high of $92.18 from September 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Affirm’s shares at the IPO in January 2021 would now be looking at an investment worth $744.55.
Do you want to know what moves the business you care about? Add them to your StockStory watchlist and every time a stock significantly moves, we provide you with a timely explanation straight to your inbox. It’s free for active Edge members and will only take you a second.
