Are people really using buy now, pay later for groceries?

Yes, and the share is growing fast. Groceries now account for about 25% of BNPL usage, up from 14% just a year earlier, and 27% of BNPL users have financed food delivery. BNPL began as a way to split big one-time purchases — furniture, electronics, exercise bikes — into four payments. When it's used for consumables like food, the purchases recur every week while the payments from previous weeks are still outstanding, which is how users end up juggling multiple loans at once.

How many BNPL users miss payments?

Nearly half. 47% of BNPL users say they paid late on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024 — a rise for the second straight year. Among Gen Z users, 57% have missed a payment. Only 38% of BNPL users say they've never paid late.

Is buy now, pay later worse than a credit card?

It's not inherently worse — a single pay-in-4 loan paid on time costs nothing, which beats credit card interest. The risk is structural: BNPL splits your spending across multiple providers with no unified statement, no monthly total, and historically little credit bureau visibility. A credit card shows you one painful number every month; five BNPL loans show you ten small, painless ones. That invisibility is why users stack loans — and why nearly half now pay late.

Buy Now, Pay Later Is Now for Groceries — and Half of Users Are Paying Late

TL;DR

BNPL was designed to split big, occasional purchases into four interest-free payments. It's increasingly being used for small, recurring essentials: groceries went from 14% to 25% of BNPL usage in a year, and 27% of users have financed food delivery. Late payments are rising for the second straight year — 47% of users paid late in the past 12 months (up from 41%, and 34% the year before), and 57% of Gen Z users have missed a payment. Because each loan lives with a different provider, there's no statement, no total, and no monthly reckoning — users stack 3+ loans without ever seeing the full number. A single on-time pay-in-4 loan is genuinely free. Five overlapping ones for consumables is a debt treadmill that resets every grocery run.

From Pelotons to produce

The original BNPL pitch made sense: you need a $1,200 couch, you have steady income, and four payments of $300 beats 24% credit card APR. The purchase was occasional, durable, and planned. You'd still be sitting on the couch long after the fourth payment cleared.

Food is the opposite on all three counts. It's recurring, it's consumed in days, and it's bought under pressure. Yet that's where the growth is:

25%

Of BNPL usage is now groceries — up from 14% a year earlier

27%

Of BNPL users have financed food delivery

Think about what financing delivery means mechanically: a $40 meal, plus fees and tip, split into four payments of ~$13 over six weeks. The food is gone in 30 minutes. The loan outlives the leftovers by a month and a half.

This shift isn't happening because people discovered a clever cash-flow hack. It's happening because food prices are up 26.5% since 2021 and wages haven't kept pace. BNPL has become the overdraft protection of the affordability crisis — a way to eat this week against money that arrives next week. For lower-income Americans especially, it's now a financial lifeline, with US consumer loans piling up to $19 trillion.

The late payments: rising two years straight

47%

Of BNPL users paid late in the past year

57%

Of Gen Z BNPL users have missed a payment

38%

Of users have NEVER paid late — a shrinking minority

Concurrent loans — a growing share of users juggle three or more

The trend line matters more than any single number: 34% paid late in 2024, 41% in 2025, 47% now. That's not a few people being careless. That's a product drifting away from the users it was designed for, toward users who need it to make the month work.

Why it spirals: the missing statement

A credit card is honest in one specific way: once a month, it shows you the total. One number, with a minimum payment and an APR attached. Painful, but visible.

BNPL has no equivalent. Each loan lives with a different provider — Klarna here, Afterpay there, Affirm at checkout — each on its own biweekly clock. No unified statement. No running total. Historically, little of it visible to credit bureaus or to the other lenders, which is why economists took to calling it "phantom debt."

One month of "small" pay-in-4 loans (illustrative)

Week 1: groceries ($120, split in 4) $30 × 4 payments

Week 2: food delivery ($48) $12 × 4

Week 3: groceries again ($110) $27.50 × 4

Week 4: sneakers ($90) + delivery ($36) $22.50 × 4 and $9 × 4

Result: 5 active loans, 20 staggered payments ~$101/week due, no statement anywhere

Each individual decision felt like $12 or $30. The aggregate is a ~$400 monthly obligation spread across 20 due dates — and because next week's groceries need financing too, the treadmill resets before it ever winds down. Miss one $27.50 installment and the late fee on it can run $7–8: small in dollars, enormous as a percentage of the borrowed amount. Autopay prevents the fee but causes the overdraft instead.

What the market thinks: the Klarna signal

If BNPL-for-groceries were a healthy growth story, you'd expect the companies running it to be thriving. The flagship tells a different story: Klarna — with over 40 million American users — went public in September 2025 at an implied valuation around $14–15 billion. By March 2026, its market cap had fallen to roughly $5 billion.

Investors looked at a lender whose fastest-growing use case is people financing food, with late payments rising two years straight, and repriced it by two-thirds. When the people lending the money get nervous about the people borrowing it, that's worth noticing — especially if you're the borrower.

The Bottom Line

BNPL isn't a scam — a single pay-in-4 loan, paid on time, costs you nothing, and that genuinely beats credit card interest. The danger is architectural: no statement, no total, no consolidated view, which makes stacking loans feel free right up until 47% of users are paying late. Two honest rules: (1) If you're financing something that will be gone before the loan is — food, delivery, concert tickets — the loan isn't a payment plan, it's a signal your budget doesn't close. (2) If you can't say within $50 how much total BNPL debt you're carrying right now, stop adding to it until you can. The product's whole design works against you knowing that number.

If groceries are what's breaking the budget, the fix usually isn't on the grocery line — it's the big fixed costs crowding everything else out. Run your actual numbers and see what's really eating the paycheck.

See What's Actually Eating Your Paycheck — Cost of Living Calculator →

Sources

LendingTree — BNPL Tracker, 2026 (47% paid late in past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024; 38% never late; groceries 25% of usage, up from 14%; food delivery 27%; 3+ concurrent loans)
Fortune — "Buy now, pay later is the new financial lifeline for lower-income Americans," May 2026 ($19 trillion in consumer loans; roughly half of Americans using BNPL)
Bloomberg — "Buy Now, Pay Later Late Payments Rise as More Borrowers Miss Installments," April 2026
Fortune — Gen Z BNPL missed payments survey, early 2026 (57% of Gen Z BNPL users have missed a payment)
Klarna — NYSE IPO September 2025 (~$14–15B implied valuation); market cap ~$5.1B as of March 2026; 42.8M US users (2024)
BLS Consumer Price Index — food prices +26.5% since 2021

1 in 4 buy-now-pay-later purchases is now groceries.

From Pelotons to produce

The late payments: rising two years straight

Why it spirals: the missing statement

What the market thinks: the Klarna signal