Buying now and paying later is adding up to big business

BNPL finance services are not without their pitfalls, but they are becoming increasingly popular among the millennial cohort after being reinvented for the digital age

‘One of the main risks attached to this type of finance is that it is easy to accumulate a number of small debts. These can quickly mount up.’ Picture: Getty

Leah Woods was a frequent user of “buy now, pay later” services. But she wasn’t using them for big-ticket items. Instead she was ordering clothes from Asos, the online fashion retailer.

The 28-year-old Leeds-based digital executive found it was a handy way to pay for a large quantity of items, sometimes in different sizes, to try on, and only have a fraction of the overall cost coming out of her account at the time she ...