Buy now, pay later options are becoming more accessible to consumers. A quarter of Americans surveyed in April 2024
A December 2023 report from Wells Fargo concluded that the"Buy Now, Pay Later market may be small now, but if we don't know how fast it's growing, it logically follows that we simply cannot know when it will be a problem.""We've often referred to this as phantom debt, where it's sort of flying under the radar and not really something that anybody has a good grasp on," Shannon Grein, one of the authors of the December note, told CNBC.
Grein emphasizes that she does not think the debt is so bad that it will explode, but rather the concern is around not being able to track how much is out there and how many consumers are behind on payments."I think the biggest challenge and first thing that really needs to come to fruition is some sort of monitoring of its size," she said."And then we can really understand if it is a challenge or something that's a concern for the consumer under the surface.