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Nigel TAYLOR Published
October 31, 2025
An explosion in the use of buy now pay later (BNPL) services has led to the UK financial regulator FCA saying many of the users of the payment method are in financial difficulty.
Its research shows around 14 million consumers, 27% of the UK adults, used the payment method in the six months to January 2025 as the cost-of-living crisis deepened, reported Sky News.
This is up from 17% of UK adults who reported using it in the 12 months to May 2025.
BNPL is a very popular option for the fashion sector and most major retailers have deals with BNPL specialists.
It said there has been a “significant increase” in the number of people using BNPL options to purchase items, with those frequently using the service more likely to be in financial difficulty”.
Those who used BNPL more than 10 times in the last 12 months were more than twice as likely to also have a high-cost credit product (48% of users), compared to people who hadn't used it (22% of people who hadn't used BNPL).
Users were also nearly twice as likely to have increased the amount of debt on credit products over the last year (51% of users compared to 27% of non-users).
Some 27% of BNPL adopters had also missed a payment of a bill or credit commitment in three of the last six months, compared to just 6% of those who hadn't adopted the financing.
The FCA, which doesn’t yet have regulatory oversight over such products due to government delays, has said it’s pushing for more protection for consumers from what it said are “potentially unfair and unclear contract terms” in the sector.
Work with BNPL providers has been undertaken by the FCA and guidance issued after it expressed concern that customers of payments services PayPal and QVC were “at risk of harm” over how some contract terms were drafted.
Both firms voluntarily made their continuous payment authority terms easier to understand, the FCA noted.
A review of the unsecured consumer credit market published by the FCA recommended that unregulated BNPL products be brought into the FCA's regulatory sphere.