Does buy now, pay later affect your credit score?

On your report and in your score are two different questions

People ask whether buy now, pay later affects their credit score as if it were one question. It is two, and the answers split. Whether a plan appears on your credit report depends on the company that lent you the money. Whether it moves your score depends on which score a lender pulls, and existing scoring models do not all use BNPL data the same way.

Experian, which keeps one of the three reports, labels BNPL accounts as their own type when a provider sends them, and says that most of them "don't currently impact traditional credit scores." Affirm said the same about its own loans when it began reporting in 2025: they would sit on credit files without counting in traditional scores in the near term. myFICO calls FICO Score 8 the version most widely used by lenders, but that does not establish the treatment of every BNPL product or every lender’s chosen model.

Experian says most BNPL accounts do not currently affect its traditional scores. That is narrower than saying every plan is score-neutral. Reporting policies, product terms and the model selected by a lender can differ.

Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay do not report the same things

Affirm is the one that went furthest. Since spring 2025 it sends every loan to two bureaus, interest-free four-payment plans as well as the longer monthly ones. If you have used Affirm since then, your Experian and TransUnion reports should list those loans. Neither announcement names Equifax, so do not expect to find them there.

Klarna has argued the opposite position in public. Its statement of May 13, 2024 says it shares data with bureaus in the UK but not in the US, because "the bureaus do not have proper models to responsibly process the data," and claims that counting on-time BNPL payments in current scoring models could lower scores. That is Klarna's reading, not a finding from the bureaus or FICO, and FICO's own test (below) points the other way for most people. In March 2025 a Klarna spokesperson still pointed reporters to that statement. The Klarna credit account issued by WebBank is a different product: its June 2024 agreement lets Klarna report your account history to credit reporting agencies and warns that a negative report may follow if you do not pay.

Afterpay's US help page is the plainest of the three. It does not report to credit bureaus and says it won't until there is evidence that the data will help customers' scores rather than hurt them. It may run a soft check when you sign up, which does not affect your score. Pay Monthly is a separate product. Check its current agreement for the credit-check and reporting provisions instead of extending the BNPL help statement to every product.

Where a BNPL plan can still cost you points

A missed payment is the real risk, and it reaches your file by a side door. Experian warns that unpaid BNPL balances can be sent to collections. A collection account is reported by the collector, not by the BNPL company, so it does not matter whether the lender ever furnished a single on-time payment. The FTC lists collections among the items likely to hurt a score, and payment history is the heaviest part of a FICO Score at 35%. An accurate collection can stay on your report for up to seven years. That is a high price for a pair of shoes split into four payments.

Applications are the smaller risk. New credit is 10% of a FICO Score, and the FTC says too many recent applications could hurt. A soft check at sign-up does not count. A hard inquiry for a credit application can affect scores. Ask whether the specific longer-term product uses one; do not assume every credit check is hard. One costs little; several in a few months before a mortgage application is the pattern to avoid.

The person who should be most careful is the one sitting just above a pricing line, at 740 or 680 say, a few weeks before applying for a big loan. A single collection on that file can push it into a worse price band, and paying the collection afterwards does not remove it.

What FICO's BNPL scores change, and what they don't

FICO has done the most work on how these loans should count. In February 2025 it published a 12-month study with Affirm that took more than 500,000 consumers with a new Affirm loan and simulated adding those loans to their credit files. For over 85% of them the score moved by less than 10 points either way, about what opening any new account does. Among people with five or more recent Affirm loans, most saw a higher score or no change, because FICO groups separate BNPL loans together for some of its calculations instead of treating each one as a new account.

On June 23, 2025 FICO launched FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL, which it calls the first scores from a leading scoring company to use BNPL data. FICO said they would be offered alongside existing versions at no extra fee and expected them to be available in the fall of 2025.

Launching a score is not the same as lenders using it. Each lender picks the model it pulls, and the slow adopters are the ones that matter most to a household budget. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide lists Classic FICO and VantageScore 4.0 for conventional mortgages, with FICO 10T approved but not yet deliverable, and no BNPL version is on that list. Treat the new scores as a sign of where reporting is heading, not as something that will reward your Affirm history on your next loan.

How to use BNPL without paying for it later

Do not use BNPL to build credit. Reporting and scoring vary by product. Afterpay’s US BNPL help currently says it does not report to bureaus; Klarna’s cited statement is dated 2024, and Affirm’s reporting announcements describe changes in 2025. Check current agreements and the model used by the lender. If you are trying to get a first score, an account that reports to all three bureaus does the job; see what credit score you start with.

Put every plan on automatic payment from an account that will have the money on the due dates. The plans are short and easy to lose track of, and the failure that hurts is not a late fee but a balance that ends up with a collector. If one does, read what you can and cannot get removed before paying anyone.

Keep the number of open plans low in the months before a mortgage or car loan. Even where they do not touch the score, Experian expects BNPL history to become visible to lenders who pull its report as more providers send data, and a lender reading your file can see what you owe. If you are getting ready for a house, the mortgage score guide covers what else to clean up.

Check your reports at AnnualCreditReport.com, especially if you use Affirm. If a BNPL entry is wrong, Experian says you can dispute it with the BNPL company or through its own dispute center; the same right applies at TransUnion. A mistaken late mark is worth fighting, because it sits in the part of the score that weighs most.