USPTO Patent Grant: Merchant Self-Service Financing and Marketing Support

ChangeBridge: Patent Grants - Business Methods (G06Q)

Published March 24th, 2026

Detected March 25th, 2026

Summary

The USPTO has granted patent US12586132B2 to Affirm, Inc. for a method and apparatus facilitating merchant self-service financing and marketing content support for marketing events. The patent details a system for approving merchants and generating marketing content based on their requests.

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What changed

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted patent US12586132B2 to Affirm, Inc. The patent covers a method and apparatus for enabling merchants to manage their own financing and marketing content for promotional events. The system involves receiving merchant requests, evaluating them against approval standards, and if approved, generating and providing marketing content based on contextual information.

This patent grant is primarily informational for businesses operating in the e-commerce and financial services sectors, particularly those offering merchant financing or marketing support solutions. While not a regulatory mandate, it signifies intellectual property protection for a specific business model. Companies in this space should be aware of this patented technology, especially if their operations involve similar self-service financing and marketing content generation for merchants.

Source document (simplified)

← USPTO Patent Grants

Method and apparatus for facilitating merchant self service with respect to financing and content support for marketing events

Grant US12586132B2 Kind: B2 Mar 24, 2026

Assignee

Affirm, Inc.

Inventors

Donovan Halpin, Jesse Kendrick, Julia Harrigan, Daniel E. Kaufman, Nitesh Kumar

Abstract

A method of facilitating merchant self-service assistance to financing and content support for a marketing event may include receiving a request from a merchant for approval for financing and content generation to support the marketing event and determining whether to approve the merchant based on comparing information provided in the request to approval standards. The method may further include, responsive to approval of the merchant, receiving context information regarding content requested, and providing the content requested to the merchant based on the context information to support the marketing event.