Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM) and Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) launched Shop Pay Installments in Australia on 27 August 2026, extending a partnership that began in the US in 2021. The offering is powered exclusively by Affirm, according to a Sydney-dateline release from the companies.
Affirm shares closed the same session up 10.41% at $85.01, on volume 4.54 times the 20-day average, according to consolidated exchange data. The jump coincided with the launch news but was driven by a separate event: Affirm’s fiscal fourth-quarter results, published the same day.
A Shop Pay Installments Australia rollout years in the making
The Australia launch is not a standalone deal. Affirm and Shopify first took Shop Pay Installments outside the US with a Canada launch in April 2025, then added the UK in December 2025, with Western Europe – including France, Germany and the Netherlands – flagged as next on the roadmap, per the companies’ investor disclosures. Australia follows that sequence rather than breaking new ground.
Millions of shoppers have used Shop Pay Installments for billions of dollars in purchases since the 2021 US launch, making it one of Shopify’s most-used payment options in the US, Canada and UK, the companies said in the release. That scale is the commercial logic behind extending it further: Affirm supplies the underwriting and financing rails, while Shopify supplies the checkout button merchants already have installed.
The launch was independently reported by Benzinga and PYMNTS, both framing it as an incremental expansion of an existing global tie-up rather than a new commercial arrangement.
Shares jump, but the driver sits in the results, not the release
Investors chasing the 10%-plus move on the day should look at Affirm’s earnings rather than the Australia news. The company’s fiscal fourth-quarter results, released the same day, showed a continuation of a profitability turn that began in late 2024. Affirm posted net income of $80.36m in the quarter to December 2024, its first solidly profitable period after losses including $166.9m in the quarter to December 2023, according to SEC filings. That profitability held through the March 2026 quarter, when net income reached $102.9m.
Revenue has climbed alongside it. Affirm reported $227.6m in quarterly revenue for the December 2023 quarter, rising to $401.4m by December 2025, per the company’s 10-Q filings. Diluted earnings per share moved from a loss of $0.54 in the December 2023 quarter to a profit of $0.37 a year later, in December 2025.
Short interest data offers no sign the price move reflected a squeeze rather than genuine buying. Daily short-sale volume ratios on AFRM ran between 0.432 and 0.626 across the ten trading sessions surrounding the announcement, according to FINRA figures – within the range seen through the prior fortnight, with no spike coinciding with either the earnings release or the Shopify news.
Where the partnership goes next
For Shopify, the Australia launch adds another market where merchants can offer instalment financing without integrating a separate lender. For Affirm, it extends the international footprint that chief executives at both companies have pointed to as a growth lever beyond the saturated US buy-now-pay-later market. Neither company set a date for the next leg of the rollout into Western Europe, though the companies’ own roadmap, disclosed alongside the Canada launch in April 2025, named France, Germany and the Netherlands as targets.
The broader market backdrop was steady around the announcement. The 10-year US Treasury yield stood at 4.66% on 26 August, up marginally from 4.64% the prior session, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data, with the unemployment rate at 4.1% in July – conditions unlikely to have shaped either the launch decision or the share price move.
What happens next for Affirm’s international push will likely turn on merchant uptake in the UK and Canada markets already live, figures for which the company has not yet broken out separately in its filings.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Markets move quickly; figures are correct as sourced at the time of writing. Always do your own research before making financial decisions.
