Affirm, a startup led by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, said Thursday it secured $100 million in financing to expand its consumer lending business that aims to disrupt the credit card industry.

The financial tech company said it had obtained the line of credit from investment bank Morgan Stanley.

That brings Affirm's financing to over $400 million, according to the online database Crunchbase.

A company statement said Affirm "will leverage the facility to continue its expansion of consumer-friendly point-of-sale financing at leading online and offline retailers."

The startup "offers consumers an alternative to traditional credit with a straightforward, transparent loan product," according tot he statement.

Consumers can finance purchases through Affirm, which sets interest rates based on "proprietary technology to verify identity and assess credit risk in seconds."

By using more sources of information than conventional credit rating agencies, Affirm can serve "to a broader set of consumers," the company says.

Affirm said it has agreements with more than 750 merchants. It offers retailers an advantage over credit card payments by assuming fraud risk and guaranteeing immediate payment.

Levchin was a co-founder of PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion and later spun off.

Pinterest tops 150 mln monthly users
San Francisco (AFP) Oct 13, 2016 - Pinterest on Thursday announced that the number of monthly users soared in the past year to top 150 million, with most of that growth coming from outside the United States.

Pinterest grew 50 percent from a year ago, with 80 million of its "active Pinners" not from the US.

Co-founder and chief executive Ben Silbermann said in a blog post that he thought the growth particularly impressive given that Pinterest doesn't consider itself a social network.

"Pinterest is more of a personal tool than a social one. People don't come to see what their friends are doing," Silbermann said.

"Instead, they come to Pinterest to find ideas to try, figure out which ones they love, and learn a little bit about themselves in the process."

People go to Pinterest for inspiration and ideas, and with each new user, software at the service gets more data with which to personalize recommendations, according to the San Francisco-based company.

Pinterest said it serves up more than 10 billion recommendations daily, double the amount delivered a year ago.

The company also boasted being an online venue for more than a million businesses, along with tens of thousands of advertisers.

Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board platform, with users decorating their boards with pictures showcasing interests in a variety of areas, including food, fashion and travel.

Pinterest sees itself as being positioned at the crossroads of social networking and online search, with users consulting it when seeking out products or services.

Instead of coming to Pinterest to see photos of friends, people come with "commercial intent" that puts the site in an ideal position to display native -- or disguised -- advertising for trips, clothing or other offerings, according to company president Tim Kendall.

Pinterest recently introduced video ads as it moved to cash in on a growing appetite for videos at the popular online bulletin board.

In June, the company unveiled new features to facilitate shopping on the site, as the platform pushes to become an e-commerce hub.

The offerings included a virtual shopping bag that users can fill as they cruise bulletin boards.

Pinterest last year dove into e-commerce with "pins" in mobile applications that let people buy items they see on bulletin boards.