Categories: Tech & Society

ATD: PayPal Co-Founder Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm

High-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneur Max Levchin is launching a new mobile payments startup today called Affirm.

It’s the first project emerging from Levchin’s San Francisco tech incubator Hard, Valuable, Fun (HVF), which he started after selling his last company — Slide — to Google and then eventually leaving the search giant. Previous to that, Levchin and investor Peter Thiel had sold PayPal to eBay.

Affirm will use Facebook for authentication of consumers, and also use a number of other social and data signals to assess risk. It will then guarantee payment to merchants — who will pay Affirm a fee — after this check.

Levchin described Affirm as a digital charge card rather than a credit card, trying to be valuable to merchants by lowering the abandonment rate of mobile transactions. Affirm’s beta launch partner is 1-800-Flowers.

“You will essentially be putting a purchase on a digital tab, and we are going to make it work for us by looking at all available data to determine if you are someone who will pay it back,” said Levchin.

Read full story at All Things D

Prateek Panda

Prateek is the Founder of TheTechPanda. He's passionate about technology startups and entrepreneurship and enjoys speaking to new founders every day. Prateek has also been consistently regarded as one of the top marketing experts in the region.

Recent Posts

India Crossed Over 1 Billion Digital Transactions a Day, Now Cybersecurity Decides Who Gets to Participate

India has crossed a historic threshold. More than one billion digital transactions now move through…

2 days ago

M&A: The art of the deal

The Tech Panda takes a look at recent mergers and acquisitions within various tech ecosystems…

4 days ago

Skilling & upskilling: AI, Finance, STEM & Scholarship Programmes

The Tech Panda takes a look at the efforts at skilling, upskilling, and reskilling in…

5 days ago

India’s tech pulse: Ecosystem harkat & the shifting investment temperament

The Tech Panda examines the forces shaping ecosystem behaviour and investment sentiment in India. INR15…

6 days ago

Indian multi-gaming platform Googly paves the way for future esports Champions With IIT Indore’s Gaming Fest – Glitchpop 2.0.

Googly, an Indian multi-gaming platform tied up with Glitchpop 2.0 at IIT Indore on March…

6 days ago

Leads Connect, ICRISAT sign MoU to develop sustainable solutions for agriculture

Leads Connect Services, the agritech data, risk management, and financial services company, in collaboration with…

6 days ago