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Listener Jim Quinn from Prescott Valley, Arizona asks: 

What is the total amount of "buy now, pay later" debt for U.S. consumers? Is it even being tracked or estimated?

Consumers who are struggling to afford their purchases now have the option to make their payments in installments thanks to the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later services.

But right now, we don’t have a full picture of the total amount of debt that consumers owe. 

BNPL data could serve as a canary in the coal mine for U.S. consumers’ financial health, but the issue is that the canary doesn’t exist, said Ed deHaan, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. 

We don’t have a central database chronicling BNPL debt because these services don’t have to systematically report their data to the major credit bureaus, deHaan said. Those agencies are the usual source for the total amount of outstanding debt in the economy, he added. 

“In general, a lack of transparency is not a good thing, especially when it comes to the financial sector,” deHaan said.

We do know the total amount of credit card debt, which reached almost $1.2 trillion in Q1 2025, and that gives us a snapshot of the economy. 

“When we see credit card balances in aggregate rising, that's an indicator that people are running into liquidity constraints,” deHaan said. “People have lost their jobs, or they're getting fewer hours, or they've run out of savings, and so now they're starting to borrow to make day-to-day, normal payments.” 

Klarna, a prominent BNPL company, reports payment activity for its longer-term loan services to the credit bureau TransUnion, but it does not report data for its Pay in 4 product, according to a Klarna spokesperson. The company’s Pay in 4 product allows consumers to pay for purchases in four interest-free installments. 

Affirm, another popular BNPL service, said it previously “reported some monthly installments to Experian.” Now it reports “all pay-over-time transactions to Experian and TransUnion,” a company spokesperson told Marketplace over email. 

Affirm users have an average outstanding balance of $736, and the 30-day delinquency rate stood at 2.4% for the first three months of this year, according to company reports. 

While we don’t have a central database on total debt, different studies can shed light on the types of consumers who use BNPL services. There are some data points about BNPL users that suggest they’re “financially vulnerable,” said Nadine Chabrier, senior litigation and policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. 

For example, more than 40% of BNPL users say they’ve made late payments on these services in the past year – up from 34% last year, according to a recent LendingTree survey.  

Women, Black and Latino consumers, those with low credit scores, and households making between $20,001 and $50,000 are more likely to be BNPL users, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

And some Klarna consumers are having trouble making payments. Consumer credit losses, or lost revenue from unpaid loans, rose by 17% during the first quarter of 2025 compared to last year. Meanwhile, the percentage of unpaid loans rose from 0.51% to 0.54%, although a Klarna spokesperson told NBC News that this total percentage is “still very low.” 

Many consumers also engage in “loan stacking” by taking out multiple BNPL loans, which is why it’s important to collect this data, said Chuck Bell, a program director at Consumer Reports. 

“We need to know: Are people getting overextended on credit, and is it harming their financial status? Is it harming their ability to save?” Bell said. 

There are perks to using BNPL services: they generally allow you to make some purchases with zero-interest and some may provide accommodations by allowing you to delay your payment date. 

“There are companies that do extend some support and grace to people who are starting out in the credit marketplace,” Bell said. 

But most charge late fees if you don’t pay on time and their longer-term plans may charge interest. 

People also often lose track of their payments and some people have reported returning an item and failing to get credit for it, leading the service to send their loan to a collection agency, Bell said. 

While it’s important to know whether consumers are taking on more debt than they can repay, data needs to be collected in a way that protects consumers’ credit scores, Chabrier noted. 

If they open multiple accounts with different lenders, that could lower their credit, she pointed out.

But right now, it’s unlikely that all BNPL services will be forced to report their data. The agency in  charge of regulating this industry – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – has been largely dismantled under the current presidential administration, deHaan said. 

Marketplace reached out to CFPB for comment on whether it ever plans to mandate that companies report this information, but did not receive a response by publication time. 

Bell said he’s concerned about the agency’s lack of oversight. “I feel like we need to get back to having a baseline of function at the CFPB,” Bell said. 

Until then, any central database will have to wait.