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Buy now, pay later (BNPL) stats

The United States ranks 21st for BNPL remorse.

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By

Richard Laycock

Updated

Fact checked
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) services are having a moment right now but is the ease of making purchases a double-edged sword? Finder surveyed 32,771 Internet users across 23 countries and found that people from the United States rank 21st for BNPL remorse, with 9% saying they’d made a buy now, pay later mistake. This is below the global average of 17% and behind countries like Germany (10%) and Canada (11%).

The most common BNPL mistake in the United States is impulsively buying something, with 4.9% saying they’d made an impulse purchase. The next most common BNPL mistakes are buying the more expensive option (2.2%) and paying a late fee (3%).

Men lead the way in BNPL mistakes in the United States

Men (9.4%) are more likely than women (8.3%) to say that they’ve made a BNPL mistake.

However, in two out of the five BNPL mistake categories, women were more likely than men to say that they’d made a BNPL error, including:

  • Buying the more expensive option (2.6%).
  • Going into overdraft (2.3%).

As for those not using BNPL services, more women (29.6%) than men (22.9%) say they’ve never used a BNPL service.

People age 55 to 64 the most likely to have made a BNPL error

In the United States, those aged 55 to 64 lead the way in making BNPL mistakes with 12.3% saying they’d had a purchase issue of some kind using instalment payment services. The next group most likely to have a BNPL mishap was those aged 35 to 44 (10.7%), followed by people aged 25 to 34 (10.3%).

Global BNPL mistake trends

The most common BNPL error was making impulse purchases, with 10% saying they'd made a buy now, pay later mistake saying they'd bought an item on a whim. This was at its highest in Vietnam, with 24% of those in Vietnam buying items on impulse, followed by Thailand (20%) and Sweden (14%).
Getting stuck with late fees was the next most common BNPL mistake, with around 4% saying they'd paid a penalty for not making a payment on time. Those surveyed in Malaysia were most likely to be slugged with buy now, pay later late fees at 9.1%, followed by India (9.08%) and Vietnam (8.7%).
Going overboard on spending was also a somewhat common problem for those who'd made BNPL mistakes, with 3% saying they'd overstretched their budget. Respondents in Vietnam were most susceptible to overspending, with 5% of respondents blowing their budgets. Not too far behind Vietnam is Thailand (5.4%) followed by Italy (5.1%).
Interestingly, 34.5% of people in Spain said they'd never used a BNPL service, closely followed by 32.3% of Mexicans and 26.3% of people in the US.

Men more likely to have BNPL remorse

Men are more likely to say they made a BNPL error than women, with an average of 18.3% of men saying they've made a BNPL mistake compared to 16.2% of women. In fact, in 14 out of the 21 countries surveyed men were more likely to say they'd made a BNPL mistake than women.
The highest percentage of men staying they had buyers remorse following a BNPL purchase was in Thailand at 41.5%. The highest percentage of women making buy now, pay later mistakes was in Vietnam, with 38.1%.
Image: Getty

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