Skip to main content

Merchant onboarding: Self service guide

  • Updated

Contents 

  1. Important disclosures
  2. Affirm overview
  3. Marketing guidelines
  4. Merchant portal, charges, and settlements
  5. Integrating with Affirm
  6. Troubleshooting and help


Welcome to Affirm! We’re very excited to have you as a partner. This self-service onboarding program will outline all the necessary steps to successfully integrate Affirm with your e-commerce platform. But before we begin, please make sure that you have reviewed the following:

 

  • If you have questions prior to starting with Affirm, you can consult this article.
  • If you haven't signed up yet, please start with this article.

 

Each section will focus on a different component of the implementation process. Once the onboarding sections have been completed and Affirm has been successfully tested on your test environment, the Affirm Implementation Team will review your test (aka staging/development) site to ensure all components are ready for a go-live roll-out. If you have any questions during the onboarding process, please reach out to implementation@affirm.ca.

 

 

Important disclosures

 

Before getting into the process, it's important to read through these disclosures:

 

Your Affirm program must comply with applicable federal, state, and local fair lending laws, regulations, and regulatory guidance. The purpose of fair lending standards is to ensure that individuals seeking financing are treated fairly and consistently.

 

Generally, financing options must be offered to all qualified consumers without discrimination on basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age (provided the applicant has the capacity to enter into a binding contract), the applicant’s receipt of income through a public assistance program, the applicant’s good faith exercise of a right under the federal Consumer Credit Protection Act, military status, sexual orientation, and other factors that may be prohibited under applicable state and local requirements.

 

Your Affirm program must also comply with the prohibitions of Title X of the Dodd-Frank Act and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act relating to unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts or practices. In essence, the terms and conditions of financing programs must be clearly and accurately communicated to consumers. 


Violating any applicable consumer protection requirement is a breach of your agreement with Affirm and can be grounds for termination as an Affirm merchant (and may result in legal action).

 

 

Back To Top

 

Affirm overview

 

We're ready to begin! We'll first quickly go over Affirm's benefits and basic functionality so you gain a better idea of what you'll be implementing. To view more information about Affirm, please view this section.

 

Affirm is a consumer-friendly financing option that allows your customers to buy now and pay over time with no hidden fees. Below are some high-level benefits for prospective customers who haven't used it before. Affirm is:

  • Quick and easy
    Checkout is simple at any store that accepts Affirm. Just enter a few pieces of information for a real-time decision.
  • No Hidden Fees
    Know up front exactly what you’ll owe, with no hidden costs and no surprises.
  • Safe & Secure
    Affirm connects directly to online stores. There’s no card number to steal, so your account stays secure.
  • You’re In Control
    Pick a loan that fits your budget. You’ll make real progress every month, and at the end of your loan you’re free and clear.

 

Affirm makes financing easy. Generally, here is how most scenarios play out when a customer decides to buy with Affirm:

  1. Customer Orders Product
    Customer selects Affirm as a payment method and completes the transaction.
  2. Affirm Pays Merchant
    Merchant is paid in full (less fees and refunds) after capture on a 24hr rolling basis.
  3. Customer Pays Affirm
    Customer makes monthly or biweekly payments to Affirm for the duration of the loan.
  4. Affirm Covers the Risk
    Affirm assumes repayment/fraud risk and can easily issue full or partial refunds.

 

Customer Checkout Flows

 

Affirm offers your customers a fast checkout flow with a clean and intuitive interface. In this process, they will be able to choose their payment plan, term length, and interest rate and get a brief summary of the loan.

 

Back To Top

 

Marketing guidelines

 

This section provides an overview of Affirm’s marketing best practices and compliance guidelines. Educating customers about Affirm and adding monthly payment messaging (Starting at $X / month...) will positively affect their purchase intent, and naturally improve conversion and average order value.

 

As part of the launch process, the Affirm integration team will review the monthly payment messaging on the product and cart pages.

 

Note:

  • For Affirm Canada's marketing assets and guidelines, please click here.

 

Back To Top

 

Merchant portal, charges, and settlement

 

Once you've got a general marketing plan in place, you can now explore your Affirm Merchant Portal.

 

Here is a list of articles that can help orient you with the Affirm Merchant experience in the recommended reading order:

 

Keep in mind that you will NOT be able to view or interact with charges or settlement reports until you complete the integration process with Affirm (shown in the next section).

 

Back To Top

 

Integrating Affirm

 

There are several ways to integrate with Affirm. The two major methods are leveraging one of our existing Platform Integrations, or building one using our Direct API Integration process. Read more about our integrations (including alternate methods of integration, and how to get your API Keys) here. We'll cover the two major methods below:

 

Integration implementation: Platform integration method

 

Using one of Affirm's platform integration methods is easy - it does not require any coding, and it's much simpler and quicker to implement over our Direct API method (shown below). If you want to watch the onboarding information in a kickoff video format, choose your platform below:

 

For an overview of our integration options, as well as a full list of the Platform Integrations that Affirm supports, please visit this article. 

 

Integration implementation: Direct API method

 

Direct API Integrations require some coding in order for it to work. There are a few things you must do to get this operational before you can deploy it to your productive account and thus have it be live for your customers.

 

Please review this overview article and these four steps to get your Direct API Integration online:

 

Back To Top

 

Troubleshooting and help

 

We hope that your self-service onboarding experience is seamless. However, if you encounter any issues, you can always consult our Troubleshooting resources or submit a ticket using the Support widget located at the bottom right of the page to search for an article or submit a ticket to our Merchant Care team.

 

Back To Top

 

Related articles