In this paper, we consider the unique representation and the \(\ell _p\) -maximal regularity of the solution for the fractional difference equation with finite delay: \(\begin{aligned} \Delta ^{\alpha }u(n)=Au(n+1)+B u(n+1-\lambda )+f(n),\quad n\in {{\mathbb {N}}}_0 \end{aligned}\) with initial conditions \( u(i)=0\) when \(i= -\lambda +1, -\lambda +2, \ldots , 0,\) where \(0<\alpha <1\) and \(\lambda \in {{\mathbb {N}}}\) are given, A and B are two bounded linear operators defined on a Banach space X and \(f:{{\mathbb {N}}}_0\rightarrow X\) is an X-valued sequence. We introduce the notion of \(\alpha \) -resolvent sequence of bounded linear operators based on the operator theoretical methods, which gives the unique representation of solution under suitable assumption on the parameters \(A, B, \lambda \) and \(\alpha .\) We also characterize the \(\ell _p\) -maximal regularity of solution using Blunck’s operator-valued Fourier multipliers theorems on \(\ell _p ({{{\mathbb {Z}}}}; X)\) when \(1< p < \infty \) and X is a UMD space. Moreover, we are able to relax some conditions in the case of Hilbert spaces.