FinTech IPO Index Slides 3% as Affirm and Blend Lead Declining Stocks

The FinTech IPO Index gave up nearly 3%, coming into the end of the first full trading week of the fourth quarter.

Affirm led declining names, sliding 16% through the past five trading sessions. As reported at the end of last month,  Affirm has partnered with Weave, an all-in-one experience platform for small- to medium-sized healthcare businesses, to provide flexible payment options for eligible patients.

With the integration of Affirm’s payment options, Weave customers can now offer their patients the option to pay by installments with 0% APR, according to the companies. The partnership, we noted at the time of the announcement, comes on the heels of three other recent additions to the payment suite offered by Weave.

These include a QR code-based Scan to Pay feature launched in August, a Mobile Tap to Pay option added in July and a link-centered online bill pay feature introduced in May. The collaboration came soon after Affirm reportedly began exploring the introduction of a subscription service called Affirm Plus.

Blend Looks Beyond Mortgages

Blend Labs lost 11.9%. The company held its investor day and detailed plans to move beyond its efforts in the mortgage space. As reported by sites including HousingWire, Blend will look to boost its non-mortgage transaction to up to 30% in 2026, compared to a current 15%. Blend Builder, the company’s cloud banking platform, will be part of the drive to create a unified platform encompassing a variety of loan types, according to comments from the investor event.

Shares of Upstart lost 2.8%.  The company said Wednesday (Oct. 4) that Heritage Financial Credit Union, serving seven counties in New York, has partnered with Upstart to provide personal loans.

SoFi shares gave up 1.5% as student loan repayments started back up this month; the Biden administration granted an additional $9 billion in loan forgiveness for roughly 125,000 borrowers.

dLocal saw its stock slide 3.5%. In an announcement, the company has said that it is teaming with Great Learning, an edTech company operating globally, to offer installment payments in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. Students will be able to make payments in their local currency and in up to 12 installments.

Elsewhere, shares of Katapult were up about 3%. The company has struck a partnership with Casper, allowing the latter to integrate Katapult’s lease-to-own (LTO) solution into its payment checkout flow. The companies said that the collaboration will, as stated in the announcement, “unlock purchasing power” for consumers who lack access to traditional financing options.

Robinhood shares were up 0.5% through the week. Reuters reported that Robinhood expects to incur about $100 million in charges in the third quarter related to previously disclosed, various legal and regulatory issues.

Nuvei shares added 2.1%, having said during the week that it has opened its latest operational hub in China as it continues to expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

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