Inside The Billion-Dollar Plan To Kill Credit Cards I #FreeBritney

Plus: Billionaires Making ‘Boatloads Of Money’ From Once-Cheap Medical Gloves

On April 26, 1986, 10-year-old Max Levchin and his family were living in Kiev, Ukraine—90 miles south of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. While the Soviet government scrambled to cover up the scale of the disaster, Levchin’s mother, a physicist, understood the radiation risk and immediately packed Max and his brother off to live with his grandmother in Crimea, hundreds of miles away. Five years later, the family arrived in Chicago as Jewish refugees with just $700; the ruble had collapsed and the government had limited how much money people could take out of the country. 

“Part of the experience coming to the U.S. from a socialist country is that I just wasn’t prepared for a lot of the things that existed here, good and bad,” Levchin says. “I got my first credit card a couple years after coming to America and promptly destroyed my credit, because I had no idea how to use this power tool.” He’s speaking on January 13, the day Affirm Holdings—the buy-now, pay-later fintech Levchin cofounded and runs as CEO—went public. Its shares doubled that day to $96, making the company worth $24 billion and his stake worth $2.5 billion. Continue reading this week's must-read story on Affirm's Levchin billion-dollar plan to kill credit cards.

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The Pursuit

This week's collection of expert tips from Forbes contributors around the world for those building and running a business. Click to sign up instantly for The Pursuit, a biweekly essential briefing by Senior Entrepreneurs Editor Maneet Ahuja.

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