BNPL

US BNPL holiday spending reached a record $16.6B in 2023, while later coverage shifted toward regulation, credit risk and major platforms’ uneven commitment to the model.

Who they are

BNPL, or buy now, pay later, is the consumer-finance category through which shoppers split purchases into installments. In the coverage, it is a contested fintech layer linking specialist providers including Klarna, Tabby, Affirm, Zilch, Axio and Snapmint with retailers and platforms such as Amazon, Walmart, Apple and Flipkart.

The recent arc

Coverage peaked in 2023Q4 as the category moved from startup growth narratives into mass retail adoption and financial strain. Adobe reported that BNPL contributed a record $16.6B to US online holiday sales, after reporting greater BNPL use during Amazon Prime Day; Walmart expanded its Affirm relationship to more than 4,500 stores. At the same time, Klarna’s roughly $1B 2022 loss and Goldman Sachs’s sale of GreenSky underscored pressure on the sector’s earlier growth model.

By late 2025, stories centered on divergent routes to scale and rising scrutiny. Amazon agreed to acquire Bengaluru-based Axio, Tabby’s secondary sale valued it at $4.5B ahead of a possible IPO, and Snapmint raised a Series B in India, while Klarna emphasized a banking push ahead of a potential NYSE listing. The latest reporting also sharpened the consumer-credit question: Empower cited 91.5M US users, accelerating defaults and unreported “phantom debt.”

The tension

The central tension is between BNPL’s value as a retail-conversion tool and its increasingly credit-like risks. Apple launched Apple Pay Later in 2023 but ended it the following year in favor of installment features, while regulators have taken inconsistent directions: the UK proposed bank-style rules, Sweden fined Klarna for anti-money-laundering deficiencies, and the US CFPB said it would stop enforcing a Biden-era rule opposed by Affirm and other firms.

Why it matters

If adoption continues through large merchants, device ecosystems and local payment rails such as India’s UPI, BNPL could become embedded infrastructure rather than a standalone fintech product. But its durability will depend on whether providers can manage losses, disclosures and compliance as effectively as they drive checkout usage; the contrast between platform retrenchment, acquisition activity and IPO-oriented expansion leaves that outcome unsettled.

Related: Klarna · Tabby · Amazon · fintech · IPO · Apple says it will no longer offer Apple Pay Later, the BNPL service l