Booking.com Joins Affirm’s Network to Offer Installment Payments

Online travel platform Booking.com has partnered with payment network Affirm to provide travelers with flexible payment options when making travel bookings.

Through this partnership, Affirm will be available at checkout across several Booking Holdings travel brands, expanding on existing partnerships with KAYAK, Agoda and Priceline, Affirm said in a Thursday (Sept. 7) press release.

Booking.com customers selecting Affirm at checkout will have the option to choose a personalized payment plan that suits their budget, according to the press release. They can pay over time in either monthly or bi-weekly installments.

Through the partnership with Affirm, travelers can book now and pay over time without worrying about hidden fees or unexpected charges, the release said. Affirm ensures that customers will never pay more than what they agreed to at checkout.

For merchants, offering Affirm at checkout can lead to increased sales, average order values and conversion rates, per the release. It also helps reach new customers. Booking.com joins Affirm’s network of over 254,000 merchants, including American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, CheapOair and Vacasa.

“Our business shows that consumers are increasingly booking travel with more flexible payment options, as Affirm’s travel and ticketing purchase volume grew nearly 50% year-over-year during the quarter ending June 30,” Wayne Pommen, Affirm’s chief revenue officer, said in the release. “Expanding our relationship with Booking Holdings enables us to provide Booking.com customers with increased access to responsible credit, given Affirm only approves purchases we believe can and will be repaid.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that buy now, pay later (BNPL) use spans generations. As traditional credit becomes more difficult to access and increasingly expensive to maintain, consumers are seeking alternative ways to make purchases, according to “The Credit Accessibility Series: BNPL’s Wide-Ranging Impact on Consumers and Merchants,” a PYMNTS and Sezzle collaboration.

In another recently announced partnership, Amazon added Affirm’s pay-over-time option to Amazon Pay in June, saying that consumers want convenient and flexible payment options. 

And in late May, Worldpay launched a multi-year collaboration with Affirm to make Affirm’s Adaptive Checkout offering available to Worldpay merchants. This partnership lets the merchants offer consumers bi-weekly and monthly payment options.