Affirm has been highly reliable recently: StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 100.0% availability and zero major incidents over the last 90 days.
Numbers alone do not tell you whether to worry, so this post also covers what actually breaks when Affirm has problems and how to get warned early.
What is Affirm?
Affirm is a buy now, pay later provider that lets shoppers split purchases into installment plans or monthly payments, with the merchant paid upfront. Stores add Affirm as a payment option at checkout through platform integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, and others, and often display Affirm price messaging on product pages to advertise monthly payment amounts.
Affirm uptime and outage history
| Metric (90 days, as of July 2026) | Value |
|---|---|
| Availability | 100.0% |
| Reliability grade | A+ |
| Major incidents | 0 |
| Total major-outage downtime | 0 minutes |
| Average incident duration | n/a |
| Most recent major incident | None in the last 90 days |
| Checks in window | 61,466 |
Among the 11 payment processing services StatusBird monitors, Affirm ranks number 2 for 90-day availability. See the full ranking of payment processing tools by reliability.
What happens to your store when Affirm goes down?
When Affirm is down, shoppers who select Affirm at checkout cannot get approved or complete their purchase; the loan application flow errors out or hangs. Other payment methods on your checkout keep working, so the damage is concentrated on customers who specifically wanted installments, which tends to matter most on higher-priced items. On-site Affirm promotional messaging widgets may also fail to load on product pages, and pending loan captures or refunds through Affirm are delayed.
Typical symptoms during a Affirm outage:
- Customers report errors or endless loading when choosing Affirm at checkout
- Affirm approval popup fails to open or crashes mid-application
- Monthly payment messaging widgets missing from product pages
- Drop in conversions on high-ticket items while card orders continue normally
- Affirm merchant dashboard unavailable or charge captures failing
If you are in the middle of an incident right now, see what to do when Affirm goes down for a step-by-step playbook.
Frequently asked questions
Can customers still check out while Affirm is down?
Yes, with any payment method other than Affirm. Cards, PayPal, and wallets are separate systems and keep working. Only shoppers who specifically choose Affirm installments will hit errors.
What happens to Affirm orders placed right before the outage?
Loans that were fully approved and confirmed before the outage are valid, and Affirm still pays you for them. Applications that were mid-flow when the outage hit were likely never completed, so no order or loan exists; those customers will need to check out again.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks Affirm's status every 2 minutes, around the clock, independently of the vendor. The availability figure counts major and critical outages only; minor degradation is excluded so numbers are not skewed by vendors that report small blips near-continuously. Grades run from A+ to F. See the live numbers on the Affirm reliability page and current status on the Affirm status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Affirm and 83 other services online stores depend on, plus your own storefront, every 2 minutes. When something goes down you get an SMS, email, or Slack alert with plain-English context, usually before the official status page catches up. Start monitoring free, no card required for the free plan.