Data shows that buy now, pay later users are engaged, goal-oriented banking customers going elsewhere to solve a problem their bank isn’t solving. Before deciding whether to build a BNPL or cash-flow solution, banks should ask a simpler question: How many of our own customers are already using one elsewhere? The answer is almost certainly higher than expected, and it reframes the conversation from “Should we offer this?” to “Why are we letting our customers go elsewhere to get it?”
This report, based on three waves of U.S. consumer research conducted by Datos Insights between 2022 and 2025, challenges the assumptions that have kept banks defensive, arguing that BNPL users are a significant, largely untapped strategic opportunity.
Clients of Datos Insights’ Retail Banking & Payments service can download this report.
This report mentions Affirm and Klarna.
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