The news: Affirm partnered with ServiceTitan, bringing buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing to the trades, per a press release.

ServiceTitan is a software platform for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other commercial services. Affirm is offering biweekly or monthly payments for consumers to budget out home repair bills.

Why this matters: The average homeowner spends $8,800 per year on home improvements, per ServiceTitan data. Often these services are unavoidable, unexpected, essential—like repairing plumbing or electrical failures—and costly. 

Consumers who can’t or don’t want to pay for these needs on a debit card may face trepidations about placing such a large charge on revolving credit. Installment plans can alleviate some of those anxieties with fixed payments that can’t snowball out of control from compound interest.

Affirm’s sweet spot: Affirm has carved out a niche in the BNPL space for large-ish tickets—like appliances or expensive hardware—that consumers don’t want on their credit card but are also too small for a personal loan. 

Partnering with a trades software platform strikes at this exact kind of purchase, placing Affirm where shoppers need it most.

Competitive edge: Some smaller BNPL players have attempted to capture narrow corners of the market, like Wisetack for auto repairs. 

Affirm’s steady uptick in strategic partnerships threatens these smaller BNPL players that had bet on industry leaders like Affirm and Klarna ignoring these pockets of the economy to service more general purchases. 

Our take: Affirm is building out a strategy to capture mid-large tickets, where the need for flexible financing is most acute. 

Future partnerships with other essential goods or services providers—or even things like dental work—would also connect well with Affirm’s user bases.

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