Buy Now, Pay Later Statistics (2026)

Buy now, pay later has gone from a checkout novelty to a mainstream form of consumer credit. In 2025, US providers originated roughly $156.7 billion in BNPL credit, with the classic pay-in-4 product making up about half and longer installment loans the rest, according to the Federal Reserve (see the table below).

About 16% of American adults used BNPL in 2025, and one estimate puts the US user base near 91.5 million. Most volume carries no interest (about 63% is 0% APR), which is a big part of the appeal, but late payments and repeat borrowing are climbing.

Estimates of the market's size vary widely because analysts measure different things. The Federal Reserve counts about $156.7 billion of US BNPL credit originated in 2025 across all product types. A Congressional Research Service brief cites a narrower ~$70 billion figure for 2025, about 1.1% of total credit card spending, growing roughly 20% a year since 2021.

Private research firms add their own projections: several put US BNPL purchase volume around $122 billion in 2025 and forecast the US sector reaching about $184 billion by 2030 (both secondary/aggregator estimates, methodology varies). The common thread across every source is fast, steady growth.

Adoption has roughly tracked upward every year. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking found 16% of adults used BNPL in 2025, up from 15% in 2024, 14% in 2023, 12% in 2022, and 10% in 2021 (see the chart below).

The CFPB, looking at six large lenders, counted 53.6 million consumers who took out at least one pay-in-4 loan in 2023, a 12% jump from 2022. Whichever lens you use, tens of millions of Americans now reach for BNPL at checkout, and the number keeps rising.

Broader definitions give bigger numbers. A Gallup survey in April 2026 found 51% of Americans had used installment plans for online purchases, with 10% using them frequently and 17% occasionally; frequent or occasional use reached 37% in lower-income households (under $48,000) versus 21% in higher-income ones (Gallup).

The four-payment, interest-free product is the engine of the category. Loan volume grew from just $2 billion in 2019 to $24.2 billion in 2021, then to $45.2 billion in 2023, and the Federal Reserve pegs 2025 pay-in-4 volume near $78.3 billion, up nearly 80% from 2023 (see the chart and table below).

That 2023 volume came from 335.8 million individual loans at an average size of about $135, with users averaging 6.3 loans each. Encouragingly, credit performance improved: the charge-off rate fell to 1.83% in 2023 from 2.63% in 2022, and the share of loans hit with a late fee dropped to 4.1%.

A handful of companies dominate. By global gross merchandise volume, Klarna is the largest, reporting $127.9 billion in 2025 across 118 million active consumers, followed by Affirm at $50.2 billion in its fiscal year to June 30, 2026 (up 37%) with 27.8 million active consumers averaging 7.0 transactions each (see the table below). Block's Afterpay ran roughly $9 billion in a single 2025 quarter.

PayPal, Sezzle, and Zip round out the CFPB's six-firm sample alongside those leaders. Note that these GMV figures are company-wide and global, not US-only BNPL credit, so they are not directly comparable to the Federal Reserve's $156.7 billion US origination number.

Nowhere is BNPL more visible than the holiday shopping rush. Adobe measured a record $20 billion of BNPL online spend over the 2025 US holiday season (November 1 to December 31), up 9.8% year over year and $1.8 billion more than the prior season (see the table below).

Cyber Monday alone drove more than $1 billion in BNPL purchases, a single-day record, and 82.2% of all BNPL orders came from smartphones. BNPL helped push total US online holiday spend to a record $257.8 billion.

BNPL leans heavily on borrowers with thinner or weaker credit. Federal Reserve data show 30% of adults with credit scores below 620 used BNPL, versus 29% at 620-659, 24% at 660-719, and just 10% of those at 720 or above (see the chart below).

The CFPB found the pattern in originations too: from 2021 to 2022, deep-subprime borrowers accounted for about 45% of pay-in-4 originations and subprime borrowers another 16%. For many users, BNPL substitutes for credit they cannot easily get elsewhere.

Usage is highest in the lower-middle of the income distribution and among financially constrained households. BNPL use peaked at 18% for families earning $25,000-$49,999, versus 10% for those earning $100,000 or more, per Federal Reserve data (see the table below). Renters were far likelier to use it than homeowners.

There are sharp gaps by race and gender too: about 25% of Black women and Hispanic women used BNPL, compared with 11% of white women. Among people who could not cover a $500 emergency expense, 22% used BNPL. The Fed's 2025 survey shows the same pattern: 29% of Black adults and 26% of Hispanic adults used BNPL, versus 12% of White adults, and use was 23% at incomes of $25,000-$49,999 versus 12% at $100,000 or more.

Most users cite convenience and cash-flow smoothing, but a striking share reach for BNPL out of need. In the Federal Reserve's survey, 87% of users said they used it to spread out payments and 82% for convenience, but 55% agreed it was "the only way I could afford" the purchase, and 21% said it was the only accepted payment method.

When the Fed's 2025 survey asked for the single MAIN reason, 31% of users said they wanted to spread out payments and 29% said it was the only way they could afford the purchase, rising to 40% among users earning under $25,000. One in five users (20%) put groceries or food delivery on BNPL, and 45% of them said it was the only way they could afford it.

That necessity signal shows up in spending patterns: a growing group uses BNPL for essentials like groceries and bills, not just discretionary splurges. It is a flexibility tool for some and a financial lifeline for others.

BNPL is disproportionately a young person's product. The CFPB found that among borrowers aged 18-24, BNPL made up 28% of their total unsecured consumer debt during months they borrowed, versus a 17% average across all ages.

Consumer surveys echo this: Gen Z and millennials report the highest adoption and the most frequent use, and in one 2024 holiday survey BNPL narrowly overtook credit cards among Gen Z shoppers (survey figures are secondary and vary by source).

The rising-usage story has a warning label. The Federal Reserve's SHED found 26% of BNPL users paid late in 2025, essentially unchanged from 24% in 2024 but up from 18% in 2023 and 15% in 2021, and 17% of all users were charged an extra fee for being late (see the table below).

The strain concentrates at the bottom and among the young: 40% of BNPL users earning under $25,000 paid late in 2025, versus 11% of those earning $100,000 or more, and 32% of users aged 18 to 29 did. Autopay adds a second cost: 11% of users had a BNPL payment trigger a bank overdraft or NSF fee. BNPL users also carry far more delinquent credit trades on average (1.82) than non-users (0.54).

A structural risk is that much BNPL borrowing is invisible. Many providers historically did not report loans to the major credit bureaus, so a consumer can stack multiple plans across lenders that none of them (or a mortgage underwriter) can see. The CFPB found 62% of BNPL borrowers had simultaneous loans, often across different providers.

This is changing: FICO began incorporating BNPL data into credit scores in fall 2025, and lenders including Affirm and Klarna have started reporting to bureaus such as Experian and TransUnion. Fuller reporting should shrink the "phantom debt" blind spot over time.

BNPL is a worldwide phenomenon. Worldpay's Global Payments Report found BNPL reached 5% of global e-commerce value in 2024, roughly $342 billion in online spend, up from just $2.2 billion in 2014, a jump of about 15,000% since 2015.

Growth estimates for the global category vary enormously by definition, from low-tens-of-billions in provider revenue to hundreds of billions in transaction value, with North America and Asia-Pacific the largest regions. The direction of travel is unambiguous: BNPL keeps taking share of online checkout.

BNPL can be a genuinely useful tool when it is a 0% way to spread a planned purchase you can comfortably repay. The trouble starts with stacking: several small plans at once turn into a payment calendar that is easy to miss, which is exactly why late-payment rates are climbing fastest among the households that can least afford the fees.

The healthier long-term pattern is to keep a small emergency fund in a high-yield account, avoid financing everyday essentials on installment plans, and direct any surplus toward investing, where a diversified portfolio has historically grown real wealth over time rather than eroding it through fees. Treat BNPL as convenience, not a substitute for savings.