Tens of millions of Americans use buy now, pay later because it offers a simple proposition: the ability to obtain immediate credit for goods and services from groceries to travel packages and split the cost into equal installments over a set period of time. Now BNPL shoppers want more flexibility—and many are willing to pay for it.
New PYMNTS Intelligence data shows that two-thirds of U.S. adult BNPL users say they would be willing to pay interest in exchange for access to plans with longer repayment schedules. That stance jumps sharply for purchases of above $500. Three-quarters of all users would open their wallets to extra charges in exchange for more time to pay.
Since April 2025, PYMNTS Intelligence’s Pay Later Ecosystem Report series has tracked how consumers use different credit products (traditional credit cards with revolving balances, BNPL and fixed installment plans on credit or private-label cards). “Beyond Pay in 4: Many BNPL Buyers Would Pay for More Time,” the June 2026 edition of the series, treats BNPL consumers’ willingness to pay interest and demand for choice in plan lengths as related expressions of an unmet appetite for pocketbook flexibility.
The data has major implications for the BNPL industry in the United States. Providers like Affirm, AfterPay, Klarna, PayPal and Sezzle have significant opportunities to win more customers and drive loyalty from existing users by offering flexible, longer-term payback options. They also have room to grow revenue by offering interest-bearing plans for larger purchases, with longer terms.
The BNPL Flexibility Mandate
The pro-interest stance is a major shift for the industry. When BNPL emerged in force around 2019, its value proposition was “no interest” if paid on time. This opened up smaller retail purchases to millions of shoppers with lower incomes or poor credit, making the then-upstart product an alternative to credit cards and their revolving balances, the workhorse of consumer credit.
Pay in 4, the interest-free foundation of the BNPL industry, typically lets shoppers pay 25% of a transaction’s cost at checkout, followed by identical amounts at weeks two, four and six. Pay in 4 accounted for half, or roughly $78 billion, of total BNPL credit issuance by dollar volume to U.S. consumers in 2025, according to a June 2026 note from the Federal Reserve. PYMNTS Intelligence estimates the U.S. BNPL market totaled $175 billion last year. BNPL has since gained popularity with consumers earning $150,000 or more a year, who use the credit method roughly twice as often as consumers earning less than $50,000.
What’s clear is that consumer openness to paying interest on these plans reflects a new desire for choice and flexibility. Nearly nine in 10 BNPL users want the ability to choose how many payments they make, not just take the set term length a retailer or merchant offers for a given plan. And many of them appear to want more time. Close to one in two (45%) of BNPL users already use something longer than Pay in 4. As such, the desire for more flexibility in payment schedules suggests either that BNPL shoppers want interest-free Pay in 4 plans, or that they want plans with terms longer than the ones they already have. Because longer repayment schedules mean relatively smaller individual payments over the course of an installment plan, these plans also likely carry interest—a cost many consumers are willing to pay.
The Interest in Paying Interest
Two-thirds of BNPL users would pay interest in exchange for a longer-term plan; only 14% would say no.
Paying interest is hardly an unfamiliar concept. Americans owed $1.25 trillion on revolving credit card balances at the end of the first quarter of 2026, Federal Reserve data shows. That’s what made BNPL’s original pitch so disruptive. Its initial framing for the Pay in 4 model, pioneered by Affirm, AfterPay, Sezzle and later PayPal, has eroded somewhat since longer-term BNPL plans emerged with payback periods of up to 48 months. Those plans typically carry interest rates that are significantly higher than credit card APRs, depending on the merchant and terms. Still, 63% of all U.S. BNPL issuance volume in 2025 offered 0% interest, according to the June 2026 Fed note.
With consumers long primed to think of interest charges as part of the retail landscape, the willingness of two-thirds of BNPL users to pay extra may not seem so surprising. Only one in seven, or 14%, say they wouldn’t pay interest in exchange for longer plans. Roughly one-fifth (21%) are unsure if they would. This suggests that BNPL providers should treat longer-term plans with interest charges as a mainstream consumer credit product, not a niche offering.
The willingness to pay BNPL interest rises with a purchase’s cost.
As with the 30-year mortgage, spreading payments over longer periods makes it possible for a consumer to buy and immediately take home something they otherwise couldn’t. For purchases of less than $100, 54% of BNPL users say they would be willing to pay interest. For purchases costing $100 to $499, the rate rises to 58%.
But once a purchase totals at least $500, things take off. Openness to paying interest jumps to 79% of BNPL consumers for purchases of $500 to $999. For purchases totaling $1,000 or more, it tempers slightly to 76%. Whether it’s new furniture, a dental whitening treatment or something in between, goods and services costing from $500 to just less than $1,000 switch on the “I’ll pay interest” lever in consumers’ brains.
Heavy BNPL Users Lead the Shift
Consumers who use the most BNPL providers are the most open to plans that charge interest.
The more actively a consumer uses BNPL, the more likely they are to be on board with interest charges. For BNPL customers who use at least four BNPL providers, 82% are willing to pay interest, compared to fewer than half (46%) who use only one provider.
Who would pay interest?
The BNPL users most willing to pay interest in exchange for access to longer plans are also concentrated among super-prime credit holders—76% compared to 50% of subprime users. Credit scores can reflect a capacity to carry debt, so those with higher scores may have more room to shoulder the additional interest costs of BNPL plans. At the same time, 49% of consumers who reported living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to pay bills had super-prime credit scores of 720 or higher in recent years. Their disciplined financial lifestyle might not be able to accommodate more debt through interest on BNPL plans.
When it comes to which generations of BNPL users are open to paying interest, the picture gets more nuanced. Willingness peaks among millennials, now aged 30–45, with three in four BNPL users open to paying interest for these plans. The openness may reflect this generation’s need for additional credit during its peak household formation years, when children need braces, roofs need replacing and family vacations with three kids and a dog need financing.
From that 75% level for millennials, openness to paying interest slips to two-thirds of Gen X, now aged 46–61. It declines further still to 52% of Gen Z adults, now aged 18–29. Then it plunges. Barely more than one-third (35%) of baby boomers and seniors, now aged 65 and older, are willing to pay interest.
Nearly eight in 10 (79%) consumers not living paycheck to paycheck are open to paying interest. That’s higher than the rates for consumers living paycheck to paycheck (59%–68%), and further evidence that BNPL’s appeal has expanded to the financially secure.
Consumers Want More Choice
Nearly nine in 10 U.S. BNPL users want to choose their payback time periods when taking out a BNPL plan—and nearly half would choose something other than interest-free Pay in 4.
Retailers and merchants offering BNPL set specific payback periods for their plans. Not every plan allows consumers to spread out payments over, say, 12 months. That rigidity frustrates most consumers, possibly because their annual income can fluctuate due to bonuses, higher salaries from job changes, unpredictable timing of income from contract work or other one-off flows.
Nearly nine in 10 (88%) BNPL users want the ability to choose how many payments they can split a purchase into. Nearly half (46%) feel strongly about that, while just 4% disagree. With interest-free Pay in 4 the shortest and most common structure, used by 55% of all U.S. BNPL consumers, the demand for choice in longer payment terms seems at least partly a willingness to pay interest.
Consumers’ desire for choosing plan payback periods ripples strongly across generations. Among Gen Z, 75% want the ability to make that choice, rising to 84% of baby boomers and seniors and to 92% of millennials and Gen X.
While that desire to choose a plan’s payback period is uniformly high regardless of income, it rises as income increases. Among BNPL users earning less than $50,000 a year, 82% want the ability to choose their payback period. Nearly nine in 10 (88%) users who annually earn between $50,000 and $100,000 want that option. Among BNPL users earning between $100,000 and $150,000 a year, 92% want plan-length flexibility. For those earning more than $150,000 a year, nine in 10 want that option.
Conclusion
Most BNPL users would pay interest in exchange for access to plans with more time to pay the required installments. Two in three say they’d accept interest charges in exchange for a longer repayment schedule.
The bigger the purchase, the more willing people are to pay interest. For anything less than $500, about half to six in 10 BNPL users say they’d pay interest for more time. But once a purchase crosses the $500 mark, that jumps to roughly eight in 10 users. When the bill gets bigger, consumers want more breathing room.
Willingness to pay interest also correlates with credit standing. BNPL users with the strongest credit scores are far more willing to pay interest for a longer plan—76%—well above the 50% among users with weaker credit scores. Millennials are almost as willing, at 75%, compared with 35% of boomers and seniors.
More broadly, nearly nine in 10 (88%) of BNPL users want the ability to choose how long their plans run. While that’s a different question than whether they’d be willing to pay interest for a longer plan, plans longer than Pay in 4 usually carry interest—and many consumers are open to that cost.
Collectively, the data suggests an opening for BNPL providers to reach more consumers, especially those with the strongest credit, by expanding their offerings of extended-time plans with interest on purchases of more than $500.
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Methodology
“Beyond Pay in 4: Many BNPL Buyers Would Pay for More Time” draws on the June 2026 wave of the Pay Later Ecosystem Report, a PYMNTS Intelligence series that has tracked consumer Pay Later use since April 2025. The findings are based on a June 2026 survey of 218 U.S. adult respondents who reported using BNPL in the last three months.
