Upshot Commerce and Affirm Establish Strategic Partnership

    CAMBRIDGE, MA, December 10, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Upshot Commerce, a provider of on-demand, fully customizable ecommerce platforms, announced today it has established a strategic partnership with Affirm, the new financial services technology company started by Max Levchin, co-founder of the digital payments giant PayPal.

The partnership enables Upshot Commerce clients to offer their shoppers consumer-friendly, low-cost installment financing at the point of sale.

Two Upshot Commerce clients - online merchants ZVox Audio and MPGear - have already started offering Buy with Affirm so customers can pay for purchases in multiple monthly installments with simple, clear financing fees that are a fraction of credit card interest rates.

For consumers, Buy with Affirm offers meaningful savings compared to revolving credit. For eTailers Buy with Affirm increases Average Order Values (AOVs) and conversion rates.

In addition to the unparalleled Upshot Commerce Solutions and Support, benefits of offering Buy with Affirm include:

+ Data-driven credit approvals that look beyond FICO scores.
+ Incredibly simple, modern user experience that outperforms other payment methods.
+ New brand promotion opportunities on shopper interactions and eTailer website.
+ Hands-on, high level merchant support.

These benefits and more give online shoppers at websites using Upshot Commerce and Affirm a better experience with the eTailer's brand, while boosting overall revenue potential.

Upshot Commerce designs, builds and develops the technology to expand and grow our client's business with the latest cutting edge technologies and services. Further, as a full service hosted platform, Upshot Commerce also provides the support and experience of over 20 years in the online retail industry to benefit our clients.

"As a full service system, we are increasingly technology partners, rather than platform providers," says Upshot Commerce CEO Neal Kaiser. "We build relationships with our clients continuously and we provide actionable strategy, technical assistance and practical ecommerce expertise. Our ongoing dialog with our clients brings a constant flow of ideas and feedback about new and developing features for our platform. Our amazing clients are truly our best assets."

Affirm was started in 2012 by Levchin; Jeff Kaditz, formerly Chief Data Officer of gaming company, ngmoco; and Nathan Gettings, co-founder of Palantir, the go-to company for mining massive data sets. They started Affirm on the belief that the current credit system based on FICO, the credit rating company introduced in the mid 1950s, is not working for too many consumers.

"Many critical purchases just make no sense for revolving credit and may be out of reach for many Millennials, who primarily use debit cards, are not interested in traditional credit, or may not have a credit score at all," said Levchin. "We price every loan to the transaction, to the person, and to the merchant. No compounding interest. So consumers know exactly what they're borrowing and what their payment will be each month."

ABOUT AFFIRM
Affirm is reimagining financial services - from credit cards to deposit banking. Starting with an amazingly simple, new way to get affordable financing at the online point of sale, Affirm lets shoppers pay for purchases across multiple months with transparent, fairly-priced fees built into every payment, and boosts conversion and basket size for eTailers at less than the cost of credit cards. Created in 2012 by PayPal Co-founder Max Levchin, former Chief Data Officer of ngmoco, Jeff Kaditz, and Palantir Co-founder Nathan Gettings, Affirm is based in San Francisco. To start working with Affirm go to affirm.com.

ABOUT UPSHOT COMMERCE
Upshot Commerce provides a comprehensive platform with robust, enterprise-ready features and best practices for Direct-To-Consumer and B2B e-commerce. Our solutions come standard with tools to control, manage and automate inventory, order management, fulfillment and warehousing, customer information, analytics, SEO, product information, merchandising and faceted navigation, and more. A key differentiator is that all these components come as an integral part of the platform, while with other vendors; they often come through third party providers and with extra cost and headaches. Our platform also integrates exceptionally well with ERPs and 3PLs and contains a rich Restful API to provide a seamless, automated workflow for you enterprise. Upshot Commerce has been in business for 20 years, with hundreds of clients, millions of transactions per month, over a billion in sales processed. A key aspect that sets us apart is how we approach each customer as a partner. The results speak for themselves: When the average online retailer changes platforms every 4 years, our average customer has been with us 7 and a half years and some as long as 18. Upshot Commerce is the most customizable, on-demand ecommerce software solution. Ever. Founded in 1994 by Neal Kaiser, the company is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The Upshot Commerce platform is ideal for growing businesses and organizations looking to upgrade and optimize their ecommerce solutions provider.

Press Contact:
Vlad Zachary
[email protected]
866.962.7462 ext. 703

Follow Upshot Commerce on:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/make-a-store-inc.
https://twitter.com/upshot_commerce
https://www.facebook.com/UpshotCommerce

# # #