The a16z Show
The $100B Niches Hiding Inside Payments
The a16z Show discusses tech and culture trends, news, and the future – especially as ‘software eats the world’. It features industry experts, business leaders, and other interesting thinkers and voices from around the world. This show is produced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every week; visit a16z.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletters and other content as well!
Show Notes
Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z General Partner Alex Rampell and Affirm Co-Founder and CEO Max Levchin for a conversation on 25 years of fintech, from the early days of digital payments to the origins of Affirm and the next generation of agentic commerce.
Max and Alex revisit what surprised them most about how payments evolved, why the card interface has been so difficult to displace, and why even the smallest corners of payments can become enormous markets. They also trace the early idea maze behind Affirm, from "pay with your identity" and the pajama problem to the realization that installment financing could dramatically increase merchant conversion.
The conversation also gets into real versus "fake" 0% financing, what people misunderstand about Affirm today, why negative customer acquisition cost can be such a powerful business model advantage, and why Max is more bullish on agentic payments than on agents choosing what people buy.
Resources:
Follow Max Levchin on X: https://x.com/mlevchin
Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell
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