Curiously, Affirm will use Facebook to verify a user's identity, and it'll also use a wide range of social and location-based data to determine an individual's credit worthiness.

ENGADGET

In order to mitigate the risk of fraud, Affirm prompts users to connect with their Gmail or Facebook accounts, which allow the company to verify the identity of the user.

WSJ: Bad Credit? Start Tweeting

As it becomes possible to conduct transactions from mobile devices, he argues, it will become increasingly important to be able to verify the identity of the user of a particular device.

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