Affirm Eyes Rent Payments With Pilot Tied to Esusu

Affirm wants a slice of the rent check.

The San Francisco-based buy-now, pay-later lender is piloting a product that would let apartment tenants split monthly rent payments into short-term installments, pushing further into the housing payments space as affordability pressures linger nationwide.

Affirm plans to roll out the offering through a partnership with New York-based fintech firm Esusu, which works with landlords and property managers to report on-time rent payments to credit bureaus, Payments Dive first reported. The rent feature is listed as “coming soon” on Esusu’s website and will be subject to eligibility requirements.

Under the pilot, renters who opt in could apply to pay rent in two equal payments every two weeks at 0 percent APR with no late fees or compounding interest, according to an Affirm spokesperson. That will allow tenants to align rent payments with biweekly paychecks rather than a single, upfront hit at the start of the month.

Missed or late payments could still affect a renter’s credit and limit access to future Affirm plans, even without formal late fees.

For landlords and property managers, the product could offer another tool to reduce delinquencies and smooth collections, particularly for residents living paycheck to paycheck.

For Affirm, it’s also a potential growth lane. Buy-now, pay-later firms are under pressure to scale and often look to partnerships with adjacent platforms to do it, Consumer Federation of America director of financial services Adam Rust told Payments Dive.

Still, consumer advocates are wary of normalizing installment debt for housing costs. National Consumer Law Center senior attorney April Kuehnhoff warned that using short-term loans to cover rent could leave tenants more exposed when future bills stack up.

“There are a lot of questions about how this would work and what this means for consumers and tenants,” she told Payments Dive.

Affirm said it is working with Esusu to underwrite applications individually and approve customers only for amounts they can “responsibly afford to repay.” A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report released last month found late fees were assessed on just over 4 percent of BNPL loans in 2023.

The move comes as rent growth has cooled but affordability remains stretched. National asking rents ended last year at just under $1,900 a month, a post-pandemic high, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

— Holden Walter-Warner