Affirm and Klarna are embedding installment payments into Google Search and the Gemini app through Google Pay. The integrations move BNPL directly into AI-driven shopping experiences, where discovery, comparison, and purchasing happen within a single conversational interaction rather than across separate search funnels and checkout pages.
Adobe's analysis, based on over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and 100 million SKUs across 18 categories, suggests that this year's season will be shaped by the dominance of mobile shopping, flexible payment options and the growing influence of generative AI and social platforms on consumer behavior. Cyber Week to drive nearly a fifth of spend: Adobe expects 10 separate days where online spending will top $5 billion.
It's a debit card that lets users decide whether to pay upfront or make payments over time, all managed through the Affirm app. In the recent earnings, Affirm card GMV more than doubled, up 132% to $1.2 billion. Active cardholders nearly doubled, reaching 2.3 million, and in-store spend increased by 187%. These are beyond just signs of adoption; more like Affirm turning its card into a core payments habit.
Klarna, the Swedish buy-now-pay-later company, has made its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. Klarna sold 34.3 million shares to investors at $40 a share late on Tuesday and was listed on the exchange on Wednesday. That is above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share and values the company at more than $15bn.
