Fintech earnings focus concerns on tariffs, PayPal, Block, Affirm

PayPal, Block and Affirm are all closely tied to the health of the consumer, which has investors on edge headed into their earnings reports.

Markets broadly have been jittery to start the year due largely to concerns about President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and the prospect of higher import costs leading to rising unemployment and reduced consumer spending.

Specific to e-commerce, there’s the end of de minimis trade exemptions for Chinese imports, effective May 2. That change, aimed at discount shopping apps like Temu and Shein, threatens tens of billions of dollars in low-cost cross-border e-commerce volume.

“Tariff implications and macro have added another wrinkle to ’25,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a note on April 16. The bank said PayPal is particularly exposed to tariff-related volatility and macro uncertainty, given that 90% of its revenue comes from consumer-driven transactions.

PayPal is the first in the group to report earnings on Tuesday. Block, the parent of Square, follows on Thursday. Affirm is scheduled to report results next Thursday. Their stock prices have been hit harder this year than the broader market. PayPal is down 23%, Block has fallen 32% and Affirm has dropped 19%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 10%.

The stocks rebounded last week as Wall Street showed some level of optimism that the Trump administration will make progress on trade agreements and that tariffs won’t be as extreme as earlier proposals suggested.

Trump signed an executive order in early April imposing tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories. After markets immediately plunged, the president soon announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs, though levies on imports from China remain, and are as high as 145%. The universal tariff rate on goods imported into the U.S. from most countries is 10%.

The fintech reports land during earnings season for megcap tech, with Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple all announcing results this week. Tesla and Alphabet both reported last week and talked about the potential impact of policy changes on their earnings calls.

On Alphabet’s earnings call on Thursday, Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said the end of the de minimis trade loophole will “cause a slight headwind to our ads business in 2025,” primarily from retailers in the Asia-Pacific region.

While Google is “not immune to the macro environment,” Schindler said, it has “a lot of experience managing through uncertain times.”