Accept an Affirm payment (2024)

Stripe automatically presents your customers payment method options by evaluating their currency, payment method restrictions, and other parameters. We recommend that you configure your payment methods from the Stripe Dashboard using the instructions in Accept a payment.

If you want to continue manually configuring the payment methods you present to your customers with Checkout, use this guide (for example, to accept payments in Subscription mode). Otherwise, migrate to the dashboard.

A Checkout Session must satisfy all of the following conditions to support Affirm payments:

• You can only use one-time line items. Affirm doesn’t support recurring subscription plans.
• Express all Prices in your domestic currency.

Use this guide to learn how to enable Affirm—it shows the differences between accepting a card payment and using Affirm.

Enable Affirm as a payment method

When creating a new Checkout Session, you need to:

1. Add affirm to the list of payment_method_types.
2. Make sure all your line_items use your domestic currency.
3. We recommend collecting shipping addresses by adding your country to shipping_address_collection[allowed_countries]. If you don’t want to collect shipping addresses with Checkout, you can also provide the shipping address using payment_intent_data[shipping]. Doing so helps with loan acceptance rates.

Stripe::Checkout::Session.create({ mode: 'payment', payment_method_types: ['card'], payment_method_types: ['card', 'affirm'], line_items: [{ price_data: { currency: 'usd', product_data: { name: 'T-shirt', }, # Make sure the total amount fits within Affirm's transaction amount limits unit_amount: 5000, }, quantity: 1, }], shipping_address_collection: { # Shipping address is optional but recommended to pass in # Specify which shipping countries Checkout should provide as options for shipping locations allowed_countries: ['CA', 'US'], }, # If you already have the shipping address, provide it in payment_intent_data: # payment_intent_data: { # shipping: { # name: 'Jenny Rosen', # address: { # line1: '1234 Main Street', # city: 'San Francisco', # state: 'CA', # country: 'US', # postal_code: '94111', # }, # }, # }, success_url: 'https://example.com/success', cancel_url: 'https://example.com/cancel', })

Fulfill your orders

Use a method such as webhooks to handle order fulfillment, instead of relying on your customer to return to the payment status page.

The following events are sent when the payment status changes:

Learn more about fulfilling orders.

When testing your Checkout integration, select Affirm as the payment method and click the Pay button.

Test your Affirm integration with your test API keys by viewing the redirect page. You can test the successful payment case by authenticating the payment on the redirect page. The PaymentIntent transitions from requires_action to succeeded.

To test the case where the user fails to authenticate, use your test API keys and view the redirect page. On the redirect page, close the Affirm modal window and verify that payment failed. The PaymentIntent transitions from requires_action to requires_payment_method.

For manual capture PaymentIntents in testmode, the uncaptured PaymentIntent auto-expires 10 minutes after successful authorization.

Affirm takes into account multiple factors when deciding to accept or decline a transaction (for example, the length of time buyer has used Affirm, the outstanding amount the customer has to repay, and the value of the current order).

Always present additional payment options such as card in your checkout flow, as Affirm payments have a higher rate of decline than many payment methods. In these cases, the PaymentMethod is detached and the PaymentIntent object’s status automatically transitions to requires_payment_method.

Other than a payment being declined, for an Affirm PaymentIntent with a status of requires_action, customers need to complete the payment within 12 hours after you redirect them to the Affirm site. If the customer takes no action within 12 hours, the PaymentMethod is detached and the PaymentIntent object’s status automatically transitions to requires_payment_method.

In these cases, inform your customer to try again with a different payment option presented in your checkout flow.

These are the common error codes and corresponding recommended actions: