If you split a purchase into four payments with Klarna, Affirm, or Afterpay, that habit used to be a secret between you and the app. Your credit score never saw it. That is ending, and it cuts both ways.
Buy now, pay later, the "pay in four" plan that breaks a purchase into four no-interest installments, exploded into a roughly $70 billion market in 2025, about 1.1% of all credit card spending, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. It grew by skipping the things that make other credit visible: no hard credit check when you sign up, and lenders that mostly did not report your payments to the credit bureaus. So you could open six of these in a month and your FICO score would never know.
Here's what's changing. In 2025, Affirm started reporting its loans to the credit bureaus, and FICO and the bureaus are building these loans into credit scores. The shift is gradual, but the direction is set: the thing that was invisible is becoming part of your permanent credit record.
41% of buy now, pay later users made at least one late payment in the past year, up from 34% the year before (LendingTree, via the Richmond Fed).
That number is the whole problem. When the plan was invisible, a missed $40 installment was an annoyance. Once it is on your credit report, that same missed payment can ding your score like a late credit card bill, and stay there. The Richmond Fed also found that only 59% of users feel very confident they can repay on time. Stack three or four plans across different apps, each with its own due date, and "confident" gets hard fast.
The flip side is real too. If you pay on time, reported buy now, pay later activity can actually build credit, which matters most if you have a thin file or are young and just starting out. The system is finally giving you credit for paying these back. It is also finally punishing you for not.
If building credit is the goal, a real credit card used lightly and paid in full each month does it more reliably than juggling four apps, and it comes with fraud protection these plans often lack. Here are the cards we rate highest right now.
Ranking
Our top-rated credit cards
Our highest-scored credit cards across every category, ranked by our methodology score.
| Rank | Company | Best for | Key stat | Score | Apply |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ChaseChase Sapphire Preferred | Best for travel rewards | 5x travel via Chase, 3x dining | 9.4/10 | |
| 2 |  Capital OneCapital One Venture X | Best premium travel card | 2x miles, 10x hotels via portal | 9.3/10 | |
| 3 | Capital OneCapital One Venture Rewards | Best for simple travel miles | 2x miles on every purchase, 5x via Capital One Travel | 9.2/10 | |
| 4 | Wells FargoWells Fargo Active Cash | Best flat-rate cash back | 2% cash back on everything | 9.1/10 | |
| 5 | ChaseChase Freedom Unlimited | Best for everyday spend | 1.5% base, 3% dining/drugstores, 5% Chase travel | 9/10 | |
| 6 | ChaseChase Ink Business Cash | Best no-fee business card | 5% office/internet/phone (to cap), 2% gas/dining | 9/10 |
So treat pay in four like what it is becoming: real debt on your real credit report. Do this now. List every active plan you have across every app, with the due dates, in one place. Turn on autopay for each so a forgotten installment never becomes a credit ding. Stop opening a new plan before the last one is paid off, because each one is another due date you can miss. And if you are using these to stretch for things you cannot actually afford this month, that is the signal to stop, not to split again.
One thing you do not need to do: panic. Adoption is rolling out slowly, and most people will see little or no score change at first. But the rules are tightening in one clear direction, so build the habit now, while a slip is still cheap.
How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.