I bought something off Amazon with Affirm, wasn't charged interest. I think they make money by partnering with companies like Amazon to promote more buyers and get a cut of sales from them instead of the consumer.
Out of curiosity, what were the repayment terms? I see on their website that they offer 0% APR on some of their shortest financings, so I wonder if you were bucketed into one of those.
(I would personally consider doing installments at 0%, so I'm curious as to whether you were given an advantageous plan based on a credit check or whether it was the timescale.)
I think you are correct about it being timescale-based.
I only used it once out of pure curiosity, so idk all of the intricate details, but they essentially offered a 4 equal monthly payments plan with 0% interest, as long as I pay it off on time. Tested it, worked as promised, all was good.
I bet if you go outside of their deadlines for payments/try to stretch it for longer, you will get hit with massive interest rates tho, but cannot confirm that. Mostly because I only use credit for things I can easily pay off in cash at any moment (except things like car/house obv), so I basically treat it like a debit card and pay it off very pedantically on time (because with 0% interest, it is essentially just extra leverage).
It was something like 6 payments at 0% interest so I took advantage of it. It was just offered as a payment option on the Amazon link. I'm seeing that now for condos I'm looking at renting next year too. While I can pay cash up front or just put on my credit card, I'd rather it sit and generate whatever small amount of interest and just use this to pay off my vacation over a few months with no interest.
(I would personally consider doing installments at 0%, so I'm curious as to whether you were given an advantageous plan based on a credit check or whether it was the timescale.)