Accept an Affirm payment

Learn how to accept Affirm, a buy now and pay later payment method.

Note

This guide helps you integrate Affirm in your online checkout flow. For in-person payments with Stripe Terminal, visit Additional payment methods.

Checkout

Direct API

Caution

Stripe can automatically present the relevant payment methods to your customers by evaluating currency, payment method restrictions, and other parameters.

Follow the Accept a payment guide to build a Checkout integration that uses dynamic payment methods.
If you don’t want to use dynamic payment methods, follow the steps below to manually configure the payment methods in your Checkout integration.

Affirm is a single use, immediate notification payment method that requires customers to authenticate their payment. Customers are redirected to the Affirm site, where they agree to the terms of an installment plan. When the customer accepts the terms, funds are guaranteed and transferred to your Stripe account. The customer repays Affirm directly over time.

Note

Before you start the integration, make sure your account is eligible for Affirm by navigating to your Payment methods settings.

Determine compatibility

A Checkout Session must satisfy all of the following conditions to support Affirm payments:

You can only use one-time line items. Affirm doesn’t support recurring subscription plans.
Express all Prices in your domestic currency.

Accept a payment

Note

This guide builds on the foundational accept a payment Checkout integration.

This guides you through enabling Affirm and shows the differences between accepting payments using dynamic payment methods and manually configuring payment methods.

Enable Affirm as a payment method

When creating a new Checkout Session, you need to:

Add affirm to the list of payment_method_types.
Make sure all your line_items use your domestic currency and the total amount doesn’t exceed Affirm’s transaction amount limits.
Optionally, specify which countries Checkout allows for shipping locations through shipping_address_collection[allowed_countries].

If you don’t want to collect shipping addresses with Checkout, you can also provide the shipping address using payment_intent_data[shipping]. Doing so helps with loan acceptance rates.

Fulfill your orders

Use a method such as webhooks to handle order fulfillment, instead of relying on your customer to return to the payment status page.

The following events are sent when the payment status changes:

Event Name	Description	Next steps
checkout.session.completed	The customer successfully authorized the payment by submitting the Checkout form.	Wait for the payment to succeed or fail.
payment_intent.succeeded	The customer’s payment succeeded. The `PaymentIntent` transitions to `succeeded`.	Fulfill the goods or services that the customer purchased.
payment_intent.payment_failed	The customer’s payment was declined, or failed for some other reason. The `PaymentIntent` returns to the `requires_payment_method` status.	Email the customer to request that they place a new order.

Learn more about fulfilling orders.

Test your integration

When testing your Checkout integration, select Affirm as the payment method and click the Pay button.

Test your Affirm integration with your test API keys by viewing the redirect page. You can test the successful payment case by authenticating the payment on the redirect page. The PaymentIntent transitions from requires_action to succeeded.

To test the case where the user fails to authenticate, use your test API keys and view the redirect page. On the redirect page, close the Affirm modal window and verify that payment failed. The PaymentIntent transitions from requires_action to requires_payment_method.

When redirected to the Affirm sandbox, Affirm may ask for the last four digits of your SSN. Affirm suggests using '0000' or '5678'.

For manual capture PaymentIntents in testmode, the uncaptured PaymentIntent auto-expires 10 minutes after successful authorization.

Failed payments

Affirm takes into account multiple factors when deciding to accept or decline a transaction (for example, the length of time buyer has used Affirm, the outstanding amount the customer has to repay, and the value of the current order).

Always present additional payment options such as card in your checkout flow, as Affirm payments have a higher rate of decline than many payment methods. In these cases, the PaymentMethod is detached and the PaymentIntent object’s status automatically transitions to requires_payment_method.

Other than a payment being declined, for an Affirm PaymentIntent with a status of requires_action, customers need to complete the payment within 12 hours after you redirect them to the Affirm site. If the customer takes no action within 12 hours, the PaymentMethod is detached and the PaymentIntent object’s status automatically transitions to requires_payment_method.

In these cases, inform your customer to try again with a different payment option presented in your checkout flow.

Error codes

These are the common error codes and corresponding recommended actions:

Error code	Recommended action
`payment_intent_payment_attempt_failed`	A generic failure indicating the Affirm checkout failed. Additional information may be available in the charge outcome reason.
`payment_method_provider_decline`	Affirm declined the customer’s payment. As a next step, the customer needs to contact Affirm for more information.
`payment_intent_payment_attempt_expired`	The customer never completed the payment on Affirm’s checkout page, and the payment session has expired. Stripe automatically expires PaymentIntents that are not successfully authorized 12 hours after initial checkout creation.
`payment_method_not_available`	Affirm experienced a service related error and is unable to complete the request. Retry at a later time.
`amount_too_small`	Enter an amount within Affirm’s default transactions limits.
`amount_too_large`	Enter an amount within Affirm’s default transactions limits.

Some errors might have additional insight included in the charge outcome reason:

Outcome Reason	What this means
`generic_decline`	The default outcome reason for a payment error. This usually indicates that the partner declined the payment (for example, because of insufficient funds), the bank issuer declined the charge, the transaction included a high-risk purchase, or a similar reason. Stripe may not always receive a decline reason for these cases.
`affirm_checkout_canceled`	Either the customer has explicitly canceled the Affirm checkout or Affirm has rejected the customer’s loan eligibility. Stripe can’t distinguish the difference between these two types of events.