Contents
- Overview
- U.S. Affirm Compliance Guide
- Marketing compliance guides
- Marketing toolkit
- Policies and regulations
- Compliance Marketing Remediation: Integrishield
Overview
Affirm services are subject to various consumer protection laws that also affect your compliance responsibilities as a merchant and your agreement with Affirm. Your marketing and terms must comply with various regulations, which include the Truth in Lending Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the CAN-SPAM Act.
You can find all the necessary resources to learn about complying with Affirm requirements on this page. These resources include the Affirm compliance general guide, marketing compliance guides, a marketing toolkit, and policies & regulations. Affirm offers pay-over-time solutions in the US and Canada. Please refer to the appropriate section for each country.
U.S. Affirm Compliance Guide
The US Affirm Compliance Guide training can help you understand your obligations with Affirm. Below is a list of some of the most common Affirm requirements you should be aware of:
- Completing an application for a payment plan
- Preventing fraud
- Merchant fees
- Dealing in an ethical and fair manner with customers
- Compliance with your refund and return policy
- Avoiding high-pressure sales tactics
- Using Affirm approved marketing materials
- Not engaging in prohibited businesses
To explore further about Affirm and the various integration options we provide, you may want to check out our eLearning & Training resources.
Marketing compliance guides
Before getting started with your marketing, we recommend reviewing our marketing compliance guides depending on which Affirm financing option you offer.
Additionally, some of your messaging may require adding disclosure information. These guides describe when particular disclosures are needed, where they should go, and what they should say.
US marketing compliance guides
Canada marketing compliance guides
For other marketing compliance and marketing assets, please visit this page.
It’s important to maintain quality and compliance when it comes to marketing materials, so you should submit all marketing materials including site banners, messaging, landing pages and email communications to the Merchant Care Team for review before deploying live on your site. Please allow 5 to 10 business days for this approval process.
Marketing toolkit
The marketing toolkit includes a number of assets to help you bring awareness to Affirm's flexible payment options at every phase of the shopping journey—increasing conversion and average order value for your business.
- Logos, banners, and buttons
- Email templates
- Email banners
- Landing page templates
- Partner Enablement
- Social Media Assets
-
Zero-percent financing assets
We recommend using Affirm-hosted assets whenever possible to take advantage of our CDN's performance and to make sure that the images used are always up-to-date.
Policies & regulations
Merchant Sanctions Policy
Please review our Merchant Sanctions policy.
Prohibited business policy
Please review our Prohibited Business Policy.
Regulations
While not an exhaustive list of regulations that apply to Affirm or consumer financing, these are the most relevant ones to consider when presenting and communicating financing options to your customers.
| Name | Summary | Applicable areas | Regulatory documentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Truth in Lending Act (TILA) | You must be transparent and honest in how you present financing options. | Marketing, Affirm promotional messaging, custom financing programs | Federal Reserve site |
| Equal Credit Opportunity (ECOA) | You cannot discriminate against or selectively offer financing to individuals based on their personal details (age, location, sex, etc.) | Marketing, Affirm promotional messaging, product-level financing | FDIC site |
| CAN-SPAM Act | You must follow established requirements for commercial messages and give recipients the ability to stop receiving messages from you. | Email marketing | FTC site |
Generally, it is unlawful to engage in any "unfair, deceptive, or abusive act or practice" when offering a consumer financial product or service. Regulators may view a representation, omission, act, or practice to be deceptive when it is material and misleads or is likely to mislead a customer. The representation, omission or act must be considered from the perspective of a "reasonable consumer." Acts or practices that may be deceptive include stating misleading cost or price claims, offering to provide a product or service that is not available, or omitting material limitations or conditions from an offer. Keep the following in mind:
- Avoid statements that could create confusion about the fact that our loans are closed-end, installment loans. These include statements that suggest that Affirm financing is akin to a leasing arrangement or ongoing/revolving credit, like a line of credit or credit card.
- Avoid statements that could suggest a "no strings attached" relationship when the customer would become contractually obligated to repay a loan, which may have an impact on their credit.
- If specific credit terms are stated (e.g., 0% down), you must offer those terms to customers.
- Promotional language must clearly and accurately convey material limitations or conditions on the terms or availability of products and services. These conditions may include promotional features, expiration dates, prerequisites for obtaining particular products or services, or conditions for canceling services.
Affirm encourages merchants to promote Affirm through email marketing campaigns, which must be compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act. The Act covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as "any electronic mail message, the primary purpose of which is the commercial promotion of a commercial product or service." Here are the main requirements (read the CAN-SPAM Act for more details):
- Don't use false or misleading header information.
- Don't use deceptive subject lines.
- Identify the message as an ad.
- Tell recipients your location.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails from you.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly.
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.
Businesses that violate FTC regulations may pay severe penalties to settle charges that are related to deceptive advertising. Affirm disables your account if you fail to comply with these regulations. Failure to comply may incur further legal and regulatory action from Affirm, your customers, or outside parties.
Some of your messaging may require adding disclosure information. Use the marketing compliance guides linked at the top of this article for the disclosures needed, where they should go, and what they should say.
Compliance Marketing Remediation: Integrishield
Every piece of Affirm marketing—whether created by us or by our partners, like you—has to comply with certain laws. While we usually monitor all of these marketing assets ourselves, it’s no easy task. So we’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Integrishield, a third-party platform, to help us keep all of our marketing legally compliant.
What does this mean for you?
If Integrishield identifies an issue with one of your Affirm marketing assets, they’ll contact you with any required changes via email. We ask that you respond within 5 business days—either by sharing the updated materials or letting us know when you’ll be able to make the updates.
Please keep in mind that any unresolved non-compliant marketing may impact your account services with Affirm.
< Back: Getting Started With Affirm: Signing Up and Account Creation