In this episode of Tank Talks, host Matt Cohen sits down with Wayne Pommen, Chief Revenue Officer at Affirm and founder of PayBright, Canada’s first e-commerce buy now, pay later platform. Wayne shares his unlikely journey from competitive rowing, including the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, to a PhD in international relations, Bain Consulting, and private equity at TorQuest, where a failed deal set him on the path to building a fintech unicorn.
Wayne pulls back the curtain on PayBright’s early days, from spinning out a tiny 5-person division called HealthSmart Financial Services to pivoting into e-commerce and landing Casper and Endy as launch partners. He offers a practical breakdown of running a successful M&A process, sharing the dos and don’ts that led to Affirm’s acquisition of PayBright in 2020.
Now a senior executive at a public fintech giant, Wayne reflects on what he’s learned from working alongside Max Levchin, why Affirm refuses to charge late fees or deferred interest, and how AI is transforming everything from underwriting to go-to-market. He also shares his views on agentic commerce, the Canadian consumer credit landscape, and why “don’t quit” is his favorite life lesson.
Whether you’re a founder navigating a pivot, an operator scaling through acquisition, or just curious about the future of payments and AI, Wayne Pommen delivers the kind of straight talk that comes from building and scaling one of Canada’s most successful fintech stories.
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The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, a broken wrist, and a comeback story
Why he chose Bain over academia and how consulting shaped his career
Joining TorQuest and zeroing in on non-bank financial services
The summer of 2013, losing a deal but falling in love with the point-of-sale lending model
Why banks ignored this niche and how technology was changing the game
Spinning out a tiny five-person division with no CEO
Doubling the health business in 2016 and realizing it would take forever
The epiphany: Canada had no point-of-sale financing for e-commerce
Mapping out the user experience over Christmas 2016 and pre-selling Casper and Endy
Running a “double-headed monster,” healthcare and e-commerce side by side
Advice for founders navigating platform shifts, from legacy platforms to AI-native products
The economics of buy now, pay later, merchant fees, interest rates, and cost of risk
Growing annual loan volume from $6 million to $220 million in five years
The COVID boom and inbound interest from Klarna, RBC, TD, and Affirm
Running a mini process, dos and don’ts for founders
Why he stayed past the earnout and has now been there for more than three years
Lessons from Max Levchin and the “dog on a bone” approach to going deeper
How to stay focused across multiple products and jurisdictions
What agentic commerce really means and what it doesn’t
Why agents will read the fine print and guide consumers to better choices
The partnerships with Google, Stripe, and Shopify
Why deferred interest is “borderline abusive” and hard to defend
Affirm’s no-late-fee, no-compounding, transaction-level underwriting model
Aligning lender and consumer interests, the Max Levchin insight
How being public forces discipline without over-dictating the quarter
Advice for CROs on timing the public markets
Why Stripe staying private proves there’s no one-size-fits-all path
The proliferation of AI tools internally and the excitement of experimentation
How transformer-based models are improving underwriting
The future of work, querying Slack for tribal knowledge in seconds
Wayne Pommen is Chief Revenue Officer at Affirm, where he oversees the company’s revenue-generating teams and products. He joined Affirm in January 2021 through its acquisition of PayBright, Canada’s leading buy now, pay later provider, which he founded and led as President and CEO starting in 2015, growing it from 5 to 250 employees with retail partners including Apple, Hudson’s Bay, Wayfair, Samsung, and Sephora. Before PayBright, Wayne was a Principal at TorQuest Partners and a consultant at Bain & Company. A former competitive rower for Canada’s national team, he holds a degree from Harvard and a PhD from Cambridge.
Connect with Wayne Pommen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayne-pommen-8844021/
Visit Affirm’s website: https://www.affirm.com/
Connect with Matt Cohen on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/matt-cohen1
Visit the Ripple Ventures website: https://www.rippleventures.com/
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