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This year, more shoppers than ever are using buy now, pay later options that let buyers pay for purchases in installments — and more often than not from their cell phones.
According to new data from Adobe, buy now, pay later accounted for $6.9 billion in holiday spending from November 1 to November 28, with nearly 80% of purchases made on mobile devices.
On Black Friday, buy now, pay later is expected to rack up $711.3 million in sales by midnight — a 12.8% increase year over year. And come Cyber Monday, Adobe forecasts a record-breaking single day of buy now, pay later spending — $993 million.
Overall, shoppers are spending more than ever this Thanksgiving, with $6.1 billion spent online, according to Adobe. And roughly 60% of online consumers placed orders from their mobile devices.
"Cyber Week is off to a strong start, where bigger-than-expected discounts on Thanksgiving propelled impulse shopping in categories like electronics and apparel," Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. "As people gathered with family and friends, many were hitting the buy button on their mobile devices, which hit an all-time high for the overall holiday season."
Buy now, pay later is available in many online stores via partnerships with companies like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna. They allow customers to pay a percentage of the total upfront and typically make interest-free payments over a set time.
A recent Harvard Business Review report found that buy now, pay later consumers spent an average of 10% more per purchase than they did without the option. And more often than not, those overspending were "financially constrained" credit-card-reliant consumers, according to the report.
BNPL has not been largely regulated, and the study warns that if consumers continue to spend more than they can afford on buy now, pay later purchases, they could accrue more debt.
