Buy Now Pay Later Isn’t Free Money, It’s Costing You 8-10% in Hidden Fees
Key takeaways
- If you re focused on picking the right stocks and ETFs you may be missing the bigger picture: retirement income.
- George Kamel, the Ramsey Solutions personality, recently spent 23 minutes on YouTube dismantling the Buy Now Pay Later pitch.
- Kamel calls the pattern "death by a thousand cuts": shoppers tell themselves "it s only $10, right?" while quietly stacking 90 payments that total $900.
Buy Now Pay Later Isn’t Free Money, It’s Costing You 8-10% in Hidden Fees panuwat phimpha / Shutterstock.com David Beren Mon, May 25, 2026 at 9:16 PM GMT+7 6 min read Quick Read Buy Now Pay Later providers charge merchants 8% to 10% in processing fees versus 2% to 4% for standard credit card processors, and retailers bake these higher costs into shelf prices that all shoppers pay regardless of payment method. BNPL borrowers are 11 percentage points more likely than non-BNPL borrowers to have 30-day delinquencies and 69% carry revolving credit card debt at an average interest rate of 25.2%, creating a dangerous debt layering pattern.
The behavioral trap of splitting purchases into small installments masks the true cost of items and encourages spending beyond what consumers would afford upfront, turning BNPL into a price hike disguised as payment flexibility.
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