Missing Buy Now, Pay Later Sends 43% of Shoppers Packing

43% of consumers abandon a purchase when BNPL is not available, which means buy now, pay later has moved from a checkout perk into a merchant growth lever.

That is the sharpest signal in the latest PYMNTS Intelligence tracker, produced with PayPal, according to PYMNTS. The report argues that BNPL now affects where consumers shop, how much they spend, whether they complete a purchase, and whether they come back.

The XOOMAR read: merchants that still treat buy now, pay later as a payment tile at the end of checkout are missing the point. The real battle is earlier, when the shopper is still deciding whether the purchase feels affordable enough to make.

Buy Now, Pay Later Is Becoming a Customer Acquisition Budget Disguised as a Checkout Button

BNPL started as a financing option. In the PYMNTS data, it now behaves more like a demand-generation tool.

38% of consumers say BNPL availability influences where they shop for food delivery, and 37% say the same for travel. The effect is stronger among younger shoppers: when booking travel, 62% of millennials and 49% of Gen Z consumers say BNPL availability affects their merchant choice.

That changes the merchant calculation. BNPL is no longer only about payment preference. It can shape traffic, conversion, and repeat behavior before the transaction happens.

The source also makes a harder point: as BNPL becomes more common, simply offering it becomes less useful as a differentiator. Execution becomes the moat. If the option is hidden, clunky, or confusing, merchants can lose the sale even when the shopper wants the financing.

“What we see across our network is that merchants who are consistently winning with BNPL have figured out that flexible payments can be a powerful growth driver. These merchants don’t wait for checkout to have that conversation—they’re showing up early, at the product page, to help drive purchase intent.”

Anand Sivadasan, Vice President and Global Head of Buy Now, Pay Later, PayPal

That quote matters because it shifts BNPL from finance to merchandising. The product page, not the payment page, becomes the moment of influence.

The BNPL Math Merchants Care About: Bigger Baskets, Fewer Drop-Offs, More Repeat Buyers

The numbers in the PYMNTS report point to three merchant metrics: average order value, conversion, and repeat purchase behavior.

PayPal says transactions completed with its Pay Later option generate average order values more than 81% higher than standard branded checkout. That figure is based on PayPal internal data analysis of merchants with Pay Later transactions from January to December 2024, across seven markets: US, UK, AU, DE, ES, IT, FR.

The conversion data is just as direct. When BNPL is unavailable, 43% of consumers abandon the purchase entirely. Another 42% choose a lower-cost product or service instead.

For merchants, that means BNPL can change both whether the customer buys and what they buy.

XOOMAR analysis: the commercial test is not whether BNPL lifts gross sales. It is whether it creates incremental sales that would not have happened otherwise, or moves customers into higher-value baskets without damaging the broader customer relationship.

The PYMNTS source does not provide merchant fee data, fraud data, return rates, or contribution-margin figures. So the profitability question remains open. What the data does show is that shoppers react strongly to the presence, placement, and ease of BNPL. Merchants still need to measure whether those behavioral gains translate into durable economics.

From Checkout Add-On to Retail Infrastructure

The report’s strongest operational finding is about presentment. BNPL works better when shoppers see it before final checkout.

PYMNTS describes “upstream presentment” as showing flexible payment options on the product page, in the cart, and during browsing instead of waiting until the last payment step. PayPal reports that merchants adopting upstream messaging and Pay Later button placements generated a 4.4% increase in overall sales.

That figure comes from PayPal internal data analysis of merchants that added messaging or buttons between September 2020 and August 2025 and use PayPal for full-stack payment processing. The base was N = 209.

This is where BNPL becomes infrastructure. It is embedded into the buying path, not bolted onto the end.

Friction is the other side of the same issue. The report says 18% of shoppers will abandon checkout if the process feels too long or complicated. Even though 81% of consumers describe BNPL as convenient or very convenient, 79% report abandoning BNPL checkouts at least occasionally, often because of unclear costs, confusing payment terms, or unnecessary data entry.

That contradiction is the merchant risk. Demand exists. The experience can still kill it.

Speed remains central. 43% of U.S. consumers cite fast approvals and reduced friction as the primary reason they use BNPL. Among Gen Z, that rises to 55%.

The Real Stakeholder Tension Is Over the Shopping Moment

The provided PYMNTS source does not support a broad claim that banks, regulators, and BNPL providers are fighting over the shopper relationship. It does support a narrower and more useful point: merchants and payment providers are competing for influence at the exact moment shoppers form purchase intent.

PayPal’s advantage, as described in the report, is network data and approval speed. The company says it can pre-fill, pre-approve, and underwrite a consumer within seconds, allowing them to apply and get approved for financing in two clicks.

PayPal also says more than 90 million PayPal consumers worldwide are highly likely to be approved for Pay Later short-term installment offers, based on internal data from March 2025. Those offers include Pay in 4 in the US and AU, Pay in 3 in the UK, IT, and ES, and Paiement en 4x in FR. DE is excluded from that specific figure.

The company reports an approval rate of 90% across markets, based on internal analysis of PayPal Pay Later transactions from January to May 2025 across US, UK, AU, DE, FR, IT, ES.

For merchants, the unresolved question is control. If BNPL influences where shoppers buy, then the payment provider is not just processing demand. It is shaping demand.

That question sits inside a broader fintech pattern XOOMAR tracks across different markets. In crypto, for example, our coverage of Chainalysis drawing a crypto tracing line before courts bite examined how infrastructure providers can define trust standards before courts or regulators settle them. And in digital-asset corporate strategy, Ripple CEO Blasts Saylor Bitcoin Strategy as Crypto Drag showed how financial infrastructure debates often become fights over who sets market behavior. BNPL is a different market, but the control point is similarly practical: who owns the transaction moment?

BNPL as Loyalty: The Repeat Buyer Data Is the Real Tell

The most important long-term data point may not be the 81% higher AOV. It may be repeat behavior.

PayPal says 74% of global purchases made through its Pay Later option are from repeat buyers. PYMNTS also says BNPL usage becomes habitual over time. Across spending categories, between 57% and 87% of consumers who regularly use BNPL say its availability strongly influences where they choose to shop.

That turns buy now, pay later into a retention tool. A smooth first transaction can train the shopper to return to merchants where the same payment experience is visible, fast, and predictable.

Rewards may deepen that loop. PYMNTS says 38% of consumers report that rewards would increase their satisfaction with, and implicitly their usage of, BNPL.

XOOMAR analysis: that is the strategic pivot. BNPL is not just financing attached to a purchase. It can become a repeat-shopping habit attached to a merchant, a wallet, or a payment brand.

The risk is that a poor experience has the opposite effect. PYMNTS notes that confusion or false declines can make consumers less likely to view BNPL as reliable in the future. Small frictions compound.

The Next BNPL Test Is Measurement, Not Availability

The next phase will not be decided by which merchant adds a BNPL button. That phase is already mature enough that availability alone is losing power.

The useful evidence will be more specific:

• Incrementality: Are BNPL users creating sales that would not have happened otherwise?
• Placement: Does product-page presentment keep lifting sales beyond PayPal’s reported 4.4% figure?
• Retention: Do repeat buyers remain profitable after incentives, returns, and operational costs are counted?
• Experience quality: Do merchants reduce the 79% occasional abandonment rate in BNPL checkout flows?
• Global execution: Does projected BNPL transaction value of more than $560 billion worldwide in 2025, cited by PYMNTS from a global BNPL industry report, translate into merchant-level gains across markets?

The thesis holds if merchants keep seeing higher conversion, bigger baskets, and repeat purchase behavior from well-placed BNPL. It weakens if the gains prove to be mostly substitution from other payment methods, or if checkout friction keeps eroding customer trust.

For now, the PYMNTS data points in one direction: BNPL has become part of how shoppers choose merchants. The winners will not be the retailers that merely offer it. They’ll be the ones that make it visible early, fast to use, and worth returning for.

Disclaimer: This XOOMAR analysis is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, legal, tax, or professional advice. It does not provide buy, sell, hold, price-target, portfolio, or personalized recommendations. Verify information independently and consult qualified professionals before making decisions.

The Bottom Line

• BNPL is shifting from a payment option into a tool that affects acquisition, conversion, and loyalty.
• Merchants risk losing shoppers before checkout if flexible payment options are not visible early enough.
• Younger consumers are especially likely to factor BNPL availability into where they book travel.