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BNPL moves into rent

Business · Heat 1.0 / 10 · 2 shows · 33m airtime

The New York Times reported on September 8 that buy now, pay later lending, which began in Europe and Australia about 15 years ago and exploded in the U.S. during the pandemic, is expanding from retail checkout into everyday essentials like rent, utilities and groceries. Americans spent roughly $160 billion through such loans last year, and Flex alone does about $2 billion a month in rent loans, having expanded this year into utilities and auto loans. Nearly half of users say they made a late payment in the last year, per LendingTree, and 29 percent used the loans for groceries, double the share from a couple of years ago. The discussion centers on light underwriting and automatic bank-account repayment.

How 2 podcasts covered it

  1. Marketplace, 2026-09-03 (18:08 to 23:14)
    Interviews the reporter on BNPL late payments
    Interviews the New York Times reporter behind the BNPL story. Adds the late-payment rate, the private-credit funding behind the loans, and the state-level push for regulation as federal oversight stalls.
    New angle: Nearly half of BNPL users say they made a late payment in the last year, per LendingTree.
  2. The Daily, 2026-09-08 (1:28 to 22:09)
    Walks through BNPL's expansion into rent
    Reporter Stacy Cowley walks through the mechanics of buy now, pay later loans and their expansion from retail checkout into rent, utilities and groceries, with consumers now paying the fees.
  3. Marketplace, 2026-09-14 (13:03 to 18:03)
    Adds a rejected homebuyer over BNPL balances
    Adds a first-hand case to the BNPL-essentials story: a first-time homebuyer program rejected an applicant over Afterpay and Klarna balances, and historians trace installment credit back to the 1920s.
  4. Marketplace, 2026-10-19 (4:57 to 7:08)
    Adds the grocery share of BNPL borrowing
    Reports new Kansas City Fed and Pew Research findings on how struggling households borrow, with a LendingTree figure on BNPL grocery use. The grocery share is a new number for the BNPL story, set against the existing late-payment data.
    New angle: 29 percent of buy now, pay later users used the loans for groceries, double the share from a couple of years ago.
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