Buy now, pay later boom shows shoppers are swapping impulse buys for strategy

From spreading out payments to dodging impulse purchases, holiday shoppers this year took a more judicious approach to spending over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales weekend, recent data shows.

Underscoring this trend, “buy now pay later” services such as Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay and PayPal Pay Later are increasingly popular among consumers of all income levels — whether shoppers are looking for convenience or seeking to spread out their budget, according to David Tinsley, a senior economist at the Bank of America Institute. Most customers are “light users,” he said, meaning they have about one to four transactions in their account, he added.