a16z@a16zSep 3

Affirm co-founders, CEO Max Levchin and a16z's Alex Rampell, on 25 years inside payments, from PayPal to agentic commerce: Payments is the biggest market on earth. No niche in it is smaller than $100 billion, and the industry has barely moved in 60 years. Visa and Mastercard keep card transaction windows too tight to build anything new inside. Max still calls the plastic card the best payment interface ever built. Affirm began in a 2011 email thread in which Max and Alex agreed that the nearest version of the idea was a bad business. Then a cosmetics brand using Affirm moved the offer from its checkout page to its product pages, and conversion jumped 30%. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, they get into why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments, what a negative customer acquisition cost is actually worth, and why Max is bearish on agentic shopping but bullish on agentic payments. 00:00 Intro 01:00 The fraud rule that built Apple Pay 03:35 Visa's problematic transaction windows 05:30 No niches under $100 billion 07:10 The email that said Affirm was a bad idea 10:00 The wand that should've killed the card 12:36 Booed off stage for presenting PayPal 15:02 Why crypto still can't buy a cup of coffee 17:16 How Max and Alex met 20:11 The 500-Facebook-friends idea 26:48 The all-nighter PHP demo 30:58 Every startup gets 40 years in the desert 32:46 Moving one line lifted conversion 30% 35:02 Why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments 39:03 One article created an entire industry 40:37 The asterisk next to 0% 42:17 What BNPL misses about Affirm 44:03 Why merchants give Affirm customers 47:00 Why a 3-year loan is harder, and better, than a 6-week one 48:19 Why PayPal produced so many founders 52:43 Bullish on agentic payments, bearish on agentic shopping 57:51 Grocery shopping is already 100% agentic YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3pegsM5drk @mlevchin @Affirm @arampell @eriktorenberg