Buy Now Pay Later regulation to happen…finally!

Deborah Ware, chief operating officer at Financial Wellness Group, said: “we raised concerns a year ago that we’d seen a rapid rise in the number of customers seeking advice who had one or more Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) loans amongst their creditors. Even before the pandemic we started to see customers coming to us with as many as ten BNPL loans.

“The boom in online retail in 2020 accelerated this trend: our 2019-20 impact report found a further 50% rise in the number of new customers with BNPL among their debts.

“So its great news for consumers that the government has accepted the Woolard report recommendation that BNPL should be FCA regulated. This type of lending is particularly targeted at younger consumers and, because its applied for at point of sale, shoppers are thinking more about what they are buying than whether they can afford the repayments.”