(Bloomberg) -- Affirm Holdings Inc. will begin offering its fast-credit options in the UK as part of its latest push for growth outside its home markets.
The company has hired 30 employees across the country for the launch and plans to hire additional UK-based staff, Chief Executive Officer Max Levchin said in an interview. This will include staff for its commercial support, compliance and regulatory relations teams, he said.
The business will be led by Ruth Spratt, who’s country manager for the UK. She most recently held a similar role at the payments provider Zip, which shuttered its UK operations in 2022.
For months, Affirm executives have been telegraphing the expansion into the UK as part of their efforts to boost revenue. The latest announcement adds to a string of wins — including that it’s one of the partners for Apple Inc.’s new buy-now, pay-later push — which have lifted the firm’s shares by about 45% since the end of June.
Affirm is one of the main providers of buy-now, pay-later offerings, which allow customers to pay for purchases in installments. The San Francisco-based fintech arrives in a competitive UK environment where its rival Klarna has already amassed 18 million customers.
In addition to its home market of the US, Affirm already offers its products in Canada. Still, not all of the company’s international forays have been met with success: it previously had expanded into Australia, though it announced last year it would wind down those operations.
“We expect to be well received,” Levchin said. “We are unique in our home markets and so we’ll bring the same flavor and meaning to the United Kingdom.”
Affirm’s arrival to the UK comes as the government announced last month it is pushing ahead with long-awaited regulation of the buy-now, pay-later industry, which is meant to give shoppers more safeguards against unaffordable borrowing and credit-card style protection for their purchases.
The rules aren’t expected to be implemented until 2026 at the earliest.
“We’ll be on the ground, we’ll certainly get involved and offer our opinions,” Levchin said, noting his firm has engaged with financial watchdogs and is already authorized by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. “We are quite pro intelligent regulation. I think markets left to their own devices sometimes end up misfiring.”
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