New survey data shows Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is becoming a routine part of predictable, recurring shopping for American households, and almost half of US consumers will use it to make the annual back-to-school purchases possible.
A survey of 1,075 US consumers, commissioned by e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend and conducted by research firm Cint in June 2026, has discovered that 45% of households in the United States plan to use BNPL to cover their kids’ back-to-school needs this year. The share went slightly up from 39% in 2025. At the same time, a significant if not alarming fact is that among those planning to use it, 31% of respondents expect BNPL to cover more than half of their total back-to-school spending bill.
For readers unfamiliar with the term, BNPL is a form of a short-term credit that typically incurs little to no interest if paid timely. Buy Now Pay Later system facilitated by numerous fintech companies lets a shopper split a purchase into several smaller payments scheduled over a few weeks or months instead of paying the full price at checkout. It is often more convenient for people than using their credit card limit, especially when salary advance payments are unavailable at their job place.
Providers such as Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay build the option directly into online and in-store checkout screens. Another advantage of BNPL loans is that they usually do not require a hard credit check, so more people can access them. The catch in all that smooth ecosystem is often that customers for whom another credit obligation would in reality become unsustainable risk using BNPL loans irresponsibly, ultimately getting into a debt trap that takes years to get out. In this respect, not BNPL providers themselves are to blame, but rather inefficiencies of the financial as well as educational systems carry some responsibility.
What makes this year’s survey numbers notable is not just the increase, which is rather natural, taking into account the BNPL solutions’ convenience and ease of access, but what the intended loans are taken for. Back-to-school shopping is not an unplanned expense. Families know it is coming every year, at roughly the same time, for roughly the same categories: clothing, shoes, and school supplies. The fact that so many households are still financing it through installment plans points to a broader change in how BNPL is leveraged.
While several years ago, when BNPL just started gaining traction, it was mainly a tool for occasional discretionary buys, today it is becoming a common way to manage ordinary, expected household budgeting. Furthermore, though clothing, shoes & accessories still predictably remain the main target purchase category for a large 39% share of BNPL users, grocery, the most routine one out of all shopping categories, is the fastest-growing BNPL spend category, surging to 29% in 2026, nearly doubling from 14% just two years ago.
The general routine purchase non-affordability trend is illustrated not only by the use of installment plans. Another 2026 back-to-school survey from personal finance company NerdWallet found that 19% of shoppers expect to take on credit card debt for the same purpose, alongside 24% who said they were likely to use BNPL. Together, the two surveys point to the same underlying financial pressure that forces a meaningful share of US households to finance routine back-to-school costs through loans of different types.
Apparently, the current wave of BNPL growth is not focused on merchant adoption, checkout technology, or even evolution of payment infrastructure. The data revealed by several surveys shows the ball is currently on the household side. Customers go through a forced shift in their financial behavior, and BNPL happens to be one of the most suitable tools to postpone the immediate budget dent coming even from routine expected purchases.
As more recurring, non-discretionary expenses move onto installment plans, BNPL providers and regulators alike will likely face closer scrutiny of how these products are used for daily budgeting. An interesting question is how both credit card providers and BNPL lenders will adapt their checkout functions to the upcoming agentic commerce, or whether lenders and buyers are even considering possibilities to allow AI agents to apply for credit on user behalf.
PaySpace Magazine Global will continue tracking how BNPL usage evolves as the back-to-school season progresses and into the 2026 holiday shopping period. Meanwhile, you can read earlier observations on seasonal BNPL trends.
