Affirm Product Improvement: Choose a User Segment and Prioritize What to Build

Affirm lets shoppers pay for purchases over time with installment loans, offered at partner merchants' checkouts and through Affirm's own app. As a product manager there, propose an improvement to Affirm: decide whom it is for and which problem it solves, describe what you would build first, and explain how you would know it worked. ```hint Pick a side and a moment Affirm serves both shoppers and the merchants that offer it at checkout, and a shopper's experience differs before checkout, at the credit decision and while repaying. Narrow to one side and one moment before you brainstorm features. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which outcome matters most: more new borrowers, more repeat use by existing borrowers, or better repayment, and which one wins when they conflict? - Should the improvement serve shoppers, the merchants that offer Affirm at checkout, or both? - Is the whole product in scope (checkout financing, the Affirm app and the Affirm Card), or only the checkout experience? - Is this for the US market only? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal tied both to the user's outcome and to how Affirm earns money and carries credit risk - A justified choice of one side of the network and one segment, located at a specific point in their journey - Concrete pain points and solutions, prioritized by impact and effort, with responsible-lending effects weighed - Success metrics with guardrails for credit losses, conversion and trust - Risks such as over-borrowing, regulatory scrutiny of pay-over-time lending and merchant reaction ### Follow-up Questions - Your improvement lowers the number of new loans per borrower in the short term. How would you make the case for shipping it? - How would you adapt the same idea for the merchants that offer Affirm at checkout? - Other pay-over-time providers can copy a feature quickly. What would make your improvement durable?