Consumer complaint received 2025-11-21 00:00:00
Product: Payday loan, title loan, personal loan, or advance loan — Installment loan
Issue: Getting the loan — 
Company: Affirm Holdings, Inc
State: UT

Complaint narrative:
Company : Affirm , Inc . 
Product : Buy Now Pay Later ( Affirm virtual card ) Merchant : XXXX Issue : Loss of XXXX percent promotional financing after approval due to unclear timing rules and conflicting information from Affirm What happened : On XX/XX/year> I used Affirm to finance a purchase on XXXX. The offer displayed at checkout was XXXX percent APR promotional financing. I accepted the terms, Affirm generated a virtual XXXX card for XXXX dollars, and I completed the purchase on REIs website. 

XXXX sent me an order confirmation that same day. The email shows an XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, order number XXXX, XXXX dollars charged to the Visa card number that Affirm issued. 

In my Affirm account, the loan ( ID XXXX ) appears as approved but still processing. The screen states : Your loan is approved but still processing. It is OK. This status just means your store is still finalizing your order, which usually takes a few days. It shows a XXXX dollar purchase price and interest at XXXX percent APR, which matches the promotional offer I accepted. 

Because this was a ship to store / delayed pickup order, XXXX later allowed the original card authorization to expire and attempted to reauthorize the payment after about XXXX days. At that point, Affirm appears to have cancelled the virtual card and the promotional loan. 

When I contacted Affirm support about why the payment failed and why the XXXX percent terms disappeared, I received XXXX different explanations from XXXX different employees : XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) : That my loan was still active and just pending while the store finalized the order. 

XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) : That it was my fault and I had not completed all of the steps or accepted the terms and conditions, even though the loan screen clearly shows approved but still processing. 

XXXX XXXX ( supervisor ) : That the loan and virtual card can only be used within XXXX hours and are automatically cancelled after that, so REIs later attempt to reauthorize could not go through. 

None of these explanations are consistent with each other, and none of them are clearly disclosed in the consumer loan documents I received. Those documents show XXXX percent APR on the XXXX dollar amount and explain that the loan will be funded when the merchant completes the transaction. They do not mention a XXXX hour limit where the promotional terms vanish if the merchant does not complete the charge within that window. 

As a result of this internal timing rule, Affirm is now telling me that : The original XXXX percent promotional loan is cancelled. 

The only way to finance the same purchase is to apply again at the regular APR, since the promotion is no longer available. 

In other words, I did everything correctly on the purchase date, was shown and accepted a XXXX percent APR offer, and even received an XXXX order confirmation with the charge. Because of Affirm 's failure to disclose important time limits and preauthorization rules, I lost the promotional terms and am being pushed by the XXXX Affirm employees to take a higher cost loan. 

I am especially concerned about the following : The approved but still processing status and usually takes a few days language gives the impression that the loan remains valid while the merchant finalizes the order. 

There is no clear disclosure in the loan documents provided to me that the loan or virtual card expires in XXXX hours or that a later reauthorization attempt by the merchant would void the promotional terms. 

The conflicting explanations from multiple Affirm representatives made it very difficult to understand my rights or what actually happened.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation