There was a time in the not-so-distant-past when credit cards were a genuine novelty for American consumers.
First emerging in the late 1950s, credit cards spread through households like wildfire during the 70s and 80s, fueling the rapid development of card technology and thus enabling them to become ubiquitous personal finance vehicles they are today. In a matter of decades, private credit has become the bedrock of the post-industrial US economy, contributing nearly $900 billion to the country’s GDP and providing six million jobs over the past three years alone.
Now in 2026, those omnipresent slabs of plastic are just the tip of the iceberg. The financial industry has options available to every strata of consumer, from predatory payday loans for poor and working-class people to crypto-backed loans for upwardly mobile yuppies. And then there’s the “buy-now, pay-later” loan, those credit card-free vehicles which up until now were reserved for small, one-time consumer purchases like furniture — or meal delivery.
According to a recent survey by the loan marketplace LendingTree, however, BNPL-style lending from apps like Klarna and Afterpay are increasingly becoming the go-to for struggling households to pay for basic needs. Flagged by the New York Times, the survey found that half of those using BNPL loans said they’d have no way of making ends meet otherwise.
That’s a simply astonishing figure, given that US consumers spent close to $160 billion through BNPL loans in 2025.
As Karen Webster, chief executive of news and market research company Pymnts, told the NYT that BNPL has become the “working capital for the modern middle class.”
“Consumers are using it more for essential, everyday things,” Webster explained. This includes services like veterinary, dental, and medical care, as well as recurring expenses like rent and utility bills.
Take Baltimore resident Ashley Reed. After a family medical emergency forced her to max out her credit cards, Reed turned to BNPL loans from a number of companies like Klarna in order to pay for things like electrical bills and auto insurance. She now coughs up about $700 a month paying down the worst of the debt, per the NYT.
“It’s a roller-coaster ride, up and down — I can’t afford to have an emergency,” Reed told the paper. “Sometimes I’m like, OK, am I going to have enough for groceries?”
Of course, it’s a Band-Aid fix for the systemic issue of affordability, as working people like Reed find themselves squeezed both by rampant inflation and horribly stagnant wages.
BNPL loans “address the real need that people are short of funds,” Lauren Sanders, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center told the NYT, “but just adding fees to their monthly budget and leaving them short next week is not the answer.”
More on finances: AI Billionaires Are So Greedy That They’re Supercharging Sales of Yachts and Private Jets
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