Affirm, known for its buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans, is making a move that could eventually help your credit history feel more complete. Starting May 1, the company will begin reporting all of its pay-over-time loans – including the short-term “Pay in 4” plans and longer monthly installment loans – to the credit bureau TransUnion. In plain language, this means the purchases you split into multiple payments with Affirm will show up on your TransUnion credit file going forward. However, while you’ll be able to see this information on your report, it won’t immediately affect your credit score or be visible to other lenders just yet. Affirm’s new reporting policy is more about transparency right now, with potential credit score impacts possibly coming later as the system adapts.
Affirm’s Plan: Reporting “Buy Now, Pay Later” Loans to TransUnion
The decision to report all BNPL loans is a significant change in how these popular payment plans are treated. Beginning with loans originated May 1 and after, Affirm will furnish details of every new loan to TransUnion. This includes all types of Affirm loans, from the classic Pay in 4 (four interest-free biweekly payments) to longer-term installment financing that stretches over several months. In the past, short-term BNPL plans often flew under the radar of credit bureaus, but Affirm is now ensuring they’re part of the record. The company announced this expansion in a recent press release, with Affirm’s president Libor Michalek calling it “a crucial step toward making Affirm’s … financial products even more mainstream”. In other words, Affirm wants BNPL to be seen as a normal, responsible way to pay, and having those loans show up on credit reports is a big part of that strategy.
Consumers who use Affirm won’t have to take any action – the reporting will happen automatically. If you take out an Affirm loan after the start date, you’ll later find an entry for it on your TransUnion credit report (much like you would for a credit card or auto loan). Importantly, this change is forward-looking: it applies to new loans from May 1 onward. Loans you took out before that date likely won’t suddenly appear, since Affirm is focusing on reporting newly issued pay-over-time plans. So if you’ve been using Affirm in the past, your history up to April might remain off the credit report (at least until Affirm possibly decides to add older loans or if they were already reported through other means).
What You Will (and Won’t) See on Your Credit Report
Once this kicks in, you (as a consumer) will see your Affirm loan details on your TransUnion credit file. This might include information like the loan amount, the payment terms (e.g. four payments or monthly installments), and your payment status. It’s a bit like having a new tradeline on your report for each Affirm loan. However, other parties won’t see it for now. Banks or lenders who pull your TransUnion report won’t be shown your BNPL loans yet, and credit scoring models won’t count them at this time. The data is essentially being added in a “consumer-visible only” way initially.
To break it down, here are the key points of what changes – and what doesn’t – with this new reporting policy:
- Your Affirm loans will appear on your TransUnion credit file (starting with loans opened on or after May 1, 2025).
- These entries will not be included in your traditional credit score calculations yet. In other words, FICO and similar scores won’t rise or fall based on these loans right now.
- Lenders won’t see these BNPL accounts on their end when they check your credit report (at least for the time being). Only you can see them on your personal credit report copy.
- This could change in the future if and when credit scoring models decide to incorporate BNPL data into scoring formulas. Affirm and TransUnion have hinted that as new scoring models are developed, these loans might start to count.
In summary, your credit report will reflect your Affirm payment plans, but your credit score will ignore them for now. So if you’re worried that using a Pay in 4 plan to buy a new phone will dent your credit score, you can breathe easy – it won’t (at least not under current rules). On the flip side, if you were hoping those on-time payments would boost your score, that won’t happen just yet either.
Why Is Affirm Doing This?
You might wonder, if it doesn’t impact scores immediately, why bother reporting these loans at all? The move is part of Affirm’s long-term vision to integrate BNPL into the broader financial ecosystem and help customers build credit with responsible use. Affirm’s president, Libor Michalek, emphasized that including all loans in a person’s credit profile is crucial to making BNPL a mainstream option. Basically, Affirm doesn’t want its loans to live in a silo; they want using Affirm to be just as credit-positive as using a traditional credit card or loan.
There’s also a clear consumer interest angle. Many people are interested in anything that might improve their creditworthiness. In fact, over half of consumers who haven’t tried BNPL (53%) said they’d be likely to use it if it helped their credit score. That’s a big incentive – imagine if splitting your payments not only made purchases more affordable but also gave your credit score a boost. Affirm is keenly aware of this. By reporting loans, they’re setting the stage so that, down the line, those good BNPL habits (like paying on time) could translate into a stronger credit history. It’s a selling point for using Affirm and a way to differentiate from other BNPL services that might not report positive behavior.
From the industry side, credit bureaus and lenders are paying attention to BNPL’s popularity. TransUnion’s executive Steve Chaouki called Affirm’s reporting move “an exciting milestone for the industry” and noted that millions of consumers use Affirm’s pay-over-time plans and deserve to get credit for their payment behavior. That phrase “get credit for their payment behavior” is both figurative and literal – if you’re reliably paying off your Affirm loans, you should get some acknowledgment of that in your credit file. Essentially, Affirm and TransUnion are saying that responsible BNPL use shouldn’t be invisible.
Another reason Affirm is doing this now is to be proactive about standardizing BNPL reporting. The company mentioned it will work with other industry stakeholders to standardize how BNPL loans are reported across the board. Right now, different BNPL providers might have different approaches – some report certain loans, others don’t report at all. This can be confusing for consumers and lenders. By taking a leadership role and sharing all its data, Affirm is pushing the industry toward a common approach where BNPL is treated like any other credit product. That could ultimately make the credit system fairer and more transparent for everyone using these services.
From Experian to TransUnion: Expanding Credit Reporting Across Bureaus
This isn’t Affirm’s first foray into credit reporting for BNPL. Just a month earlier (in March 2025), Affirm announced a similar partnership with Experian, another major credit bureau. As of April 1, Affirm began furnishing information about all its payment plans to Experian as well. Experian was actually the first credit reporting agency to get on board with full BNPL reporting from Affirm. Before that, Affirm had already been reporting its longer-term installment loans to Experian, but shorter plans like “Pay in 4” or other split-pay options weren’t being shared. The April initiative expanded that to every Affirm loan product.
With Experian and TransUnion now in the loop, two of the three big credit bureaus will contain Affirm loan data. (Equifax is the only one of the “big three” remaining, and Affirm hinted that it may start sharing with other bureaus in the future as well, so stay tuned.) For consumers, this means if you check your Experian or TransUnion credit report, you’ll see your Affirm activity listed. Each bureau might display it a bit differently, but the key details should be there. This multi-bureau reporting is a strong sign that BNPL is being embraced as a standard financial service rather than an off-the-books convenience.
The partnership with Experian was met with positive feedback from credit experts. Experian’s North America financial services chief, Scott Brown, praised the move for offering greater transparency and helping consumers build credit histories, calling it “the right thing to do for consumers, the industry and the economy at large”. In short, credit bureaus seem to agree that bringing BNPL into the credit reporting fold is beneficial. It gives lenders a more complete picture of borrowers’ obligations and gives consumers credit for handling those obligations well. As Affirm adds TransUnion to its reporting list, it reinforces that momentum. We’re watching a trend where BNPL providers and credit bureaus are closing the data gap that once existed around these point-of-sale loans.
BNPL Data and Your Credit Score: Looking Ahead
Right now, your Affirm loans showing up on a report is mainly a record-keeping change – your score isn’t affected. But that may not be the case forever. The world of credit scoring is slowly adapting to include new forms of data like BNPL loans. In fact, the major scoring company FICO announced in February 2025 that it plans to incorporate BNPL data into credit score calculations. FICO decided this after conducting a joint study with Affirm, which found that including BNPL loans could actually raise FICO scores for some consumers and improve lending risk assessments for banks. In essence, they discovered that a history of on-time BNPL payments is often a sign of good credit behavior, so ignoring that data might mean missing part of the picture.
What does this mean for you? It means that in the future, those Affirm “pay in 4” plans you successfully paid off could start to count in your favor, much like a paid-off credit card or personal loan would. Newer credit scoring models (both FICO and other models like VantageScore) are exploring ways to factor in alternative data such as BNPL, rent payments, subscription payments, and more. Affirm and TransUnion even noted that as new scoring models develop, the Affirm loan info may begin to influence your scores down the line. We’re not quite there yet, but the groundwork is being laid. The credit bureaus have the data, and scoring companies are testing how to use it.
Even regulators have an eye on this issue. The acting head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (a major banking regulator) remarked in March that alternative data – which includes things like BNPL records – has value in credit scoring, and that fintech innovations can help expand responsible lending. In other words, there’s recognition at high levels that traditional credit reports and scores don’t tell the whole story, and incorporating new data points could make lending more inclusive and accurate. BNPL is one of those new data points. It became wildly popular very quickly, especially among younger consumers, and now the financial system is catching up to account for it.
For now, if you’re using BNPL services like Affirm, the best strategy remains the same: pay on time. Whether or not it boosts your credit score today, a habit of timely payments will only help you in the long run. If and when those payments start counting toward your score, you’ll be glad you treated them with the same seriousness as a credit card bill. And even in the present, anyone reviewing your full credit file (say, for a mortgage application that looks at detailed reports, not just scores) could take note of your Affirm loans. Having a record that shows you managed multiple buy-now-pay-later plans responsibly could reflect well on your overall creditworthiness.
The Bottom Line for Consumers
Affirm’s move to report BNPL loans to TransUnion is a sign of the times – “buy now, pay later” is growing up and becoming part of the established credit system. For consumers, this change is mostly positive. It means your good behavior with BNPL isn’t going unnoticed, and in the future it might even give you a credit boost. There’s no need to panic about your credit score if you love using Affirm to split payments; nothing in your score will change immediately due to this reporting. Just be aware that those loans will be documented on your record.
If you’re someone who has avoided BNPL because you feared it was “off the books” or wouldn’t help you build credit, these developments might make you reconsider. With Affirm reporting to Experian and TransUnion (and potentially others down the road), using a pay-over-time plan could become another tool to build a healthy credit profile – as long as you use it wisely. On the flip side, remember that reporting cuts both ways: if someone were to misuse BNPL and not pay back their installment plans, that negative behavior could eventually show up too. So the usual advice applies: don’t borrow more than you can repay, even if it’s split into smaller chunks.
In a nutshell, Affirm is bringing more transparency to how you pay, and the financial world is adjusting to new habits. Your credit report is gradually becoming a more complete reflection of your financial life, BNPL plans included. While scores haven’t caught up yet, they likely will.
Bottom line: keep doing what responsible borrowers do. Pay on time, keep an eye on your credit reports, and enjoy the flexibility of services like Affirm knowing that they’re becoming part of the big picture. Today it’s about visibility and recognition, and tomorrow it could be about reward – as your on-time BNPL payments start to count toward the credit reputation you’ve been building all along.