Buy Now, Pay Later Is About to Hit Your Credit Score
Millions of Americans use buy now, pay later loans that have never touched a credit report. That's ending this fall, and regulators are already asking hard questions.
Fifteen percent of American adults used a buy now, pay later loan in the past year, according to the Federal Reserve. For most of them, that debt has been invisible to lenders — not on a credit report, not weighed against a mortgage application, not counted anywhere. That blind spot is closing.
What's actually changing
FICO, the company behind the credit score used in the overwhelming majority of U.S. lending decisions, is folding buy now, pay later data into two of its roughly 15 scoring products starting this fall: FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL. Until now, none of FICO's scores have counted BNPL loans at all, even when a borrower had several open at once.
"Buy now, pay later is becoming a really big part of how people are managing their finances, and so FICO wanted to be able to manage and reflect that shift," Julie May, vice president and general manager of business-to-business scores at FICO, told NPR.
The people using these loans most are exactly the borrowers a credit score is supposed to protect and serve: low- and middle-income shoppers, Black and Hispanic consumers, women, and millennials and Gen Z, according to Federal Reserve research. Many use installment plans from services like Affirm and Klarna specifically to avoid credit card interest — or because it's the only way they can afford a purchase at all. The average loan is small: $142 in 2022, per a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report.
Will using buy now, pay later hurt or help my credit score?
It depends entirely on whether payments arrive on time. FICO ran a yearlong study with loan data from Affirm and found that adding BNPL information moved scores by no more than 10 points, up or down, for more than 85% of the people studied. The company hasn't said what happened to the remaining 15%.
"In the past, when buy now, pay later loans have not been reported to credit bureaus, that has meant that credit card lenders couldn't see the presence of that debt when they were making a decision on how much credit to offer. And that set up a possibility where a lender might offer more credit than a person can reasonably afford to repay."
Adam Rust, director of financial services, Consumer Federation of America
Rust cautions against expecting too much from the change in either direction. A recent CFPB study found people tend to use buy now, pay later sporadically rather than constantly, he told NPR, so "if a person is hoping that using a single buy now, pay later loan will have a dramatic effect on their credit, it's likely that won't be the case."
The catch: fewer protections than a credit card
The trouble isn't only the score. Rust points out that buy now, pay later loans function a lot like credit cards for the shopper but carry weaker legal protections, especially around disputes. Consumers have run into trouble canceling an order and getting refunded by the merchant, only to remain on the hook for payments to the lending company anyway.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tried to close that gap in 2024 with a rule treating BNPL lenders essentially like credit card issuers, including a right to dispute charges. In May 2025, under the Trump administration, the CFPB said it was pulling back from enforcing that rule and would consider rescinding it entirely — leaving BNPL users with a payment product that increasingly counts against them on a credit report but doesn't carry the same dispute rights a credit card guarantees. It's the same regulatory tug-of-war playing out around the CFPB's $8 late-fee cap and the fight over junk fees more broadly: rules written to protect consumers, then contested the moment enforcement priorities shift.
Are regulators still watching this?
Closely. On May 6, 2026, Senate Democrats led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent letters to the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies demanding detail on how they classify and process BNPL data — how multiple loans from one borrower get reported, how returns and disputes are handled, and whether any studies exist on what including this data does to people's scores. It followed an earlier round of letters sent to BNPL providers themselves in November 2025. Most of those providers said they don't currently furnish data automatically, even as all three bureaus confirmed they're able to receive it from at least one provider already.
None of that oversight changes what's arriving in scoring models this fall. For a borrower who has never missed a payment, the shift is mostly good news — a thin credit file finally gets some substance. For anyone juggling several "pay in four" plans at once with a payment due here and there, the file just got a lot more honest, whether that borrower asked for it or not.
