Buy Now, Pay Later Is About to Hit Your Credit Score — What Actually Moves It
FICO's new Score 10 BNPL models are the first to count buy now, pay later loans. Here's what actually moves your score — and the medical-debt rule that got reversed.
Starting Fall 2025, it can. FICO's new Score 10 BNPL models are the first to factor buy-now-pay-later loans into your score. In a FICO study of over 500,000 consumers, on-time BNPL use moved scores within ±10 points for more than 85%; missed payments can lower them more.
Get new posts in your inbox
No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
About the Author
Sujit KarkiFinance Researcher & Market Analyst
Independent finance researcher and market analyst with expertise in macroeconomics, equity markets, and personal finance. I help regular investors make better-informed decisions through rigorous, data-driven analysis.
FICO Score 10 BNPL and Score 10 T BNPL, launched Fall 2025, are the first scores to factor in buy-now-pay-later data.
A FICO/Affirm study of 500,000+ consumers found on-time BNPL use moved scores within ±10 points for 85%+ of users.
A federal court vacated the CFPB's medical-debt credit-reporting rule on July 11, 2025 — it never took full effect.
Payment history and credit utilization still dominate your score far more than any single BNPL loan.
If you've used Klarna, Affirm, or Afterpay and wondered whether it's quietly changing your credit score, the honest answer used to be "probably not, in either direction" — because most BNPL providers didn't consistently report to the major credit bureaus. That's starting to change. Let me walk through what's actually different now, what got reversed in a separate but related fight over medical debt, and what genuinely moves your score versus what doesn't.
What BNPL scoring actually does
FICO announced FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL on June 23, 2025, becoming available to lenders in the fall of 2025 — the first credit scores from a major provider built specifically to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loan data. FICO is used by roughly 90% of top US lenders, so a model change here has real reach once lenders actually adopt it.
The new models were trained on a joint study with Affirm covering more than 500,000 consumers. The headline finding: for the large majority of people, adding BNPL data to the score doesn't swing it dramatically. On-time BNPL use moved scores within ±10 points for more than 85% of the study population — comparable to the kind of shift you'd see from opening any new account.
Note
These new scores are offered alongside existing FICO models, at no extra cost to lenders, not as a mandatory replacement. That means adoption will be gradual and uneven — don't assume every lender checking your credit is already looking at BNPL activity.
Medical debt: what changed and what got reversed
This is a genuinely separate fight that gets confused with the BNPL story because both involve "what counts on your credit report" debates happening at the same time. The credit bureaus made two voluntary changes years ago: paid medical collections were removed and given a one-year reporting delay starting July 1, 2022, and medical collections under $500 were removed starting April 11, 2023. VantageScore's newer models (3.0 and 4.0) fully exclude medical collections, and FICO Score 9 gives them reduced weight.
The bigger swing was a CFPB rule, finalized in January 2025, that would have gone further and removed most medical debt from credit reports and barred lenders from considering it at all. That rule never got the chance to take effect: on July 11, 2025, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated it in Cornerstone Credit Union League v. CFPB, on a joint request from the CFPB itself and industry plaintiffs, finding the rule exceeded the agency's authority under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The court's order also bars the CFPB from issuing a similar rule again. So the voluntary bureau changes from 2022-2023 still stand, but the broader federal rule is dead.
What actually moves a score
I'd rather people worry less about BNPL and medical debt specifically and more about the two factors that dominate every mainstream scoring model regardless of what's newly included: payment history and credit utilization. Those two factors combined typically account for the majority of your score's movement in any given month. A single BNPL loan paid on time is a rounding error next to a maxed-out credit card or a 30-day-late mortgage payment.
Pro Tip
If you're using BNPL as a substitute for a credit card because you think it's "off the radar," that assumption is getting weaker every quarter as more providers start reporting to bureaus and more scoring models are built to see it. Treat every BNPL installment like the real debt obligation it is.
Here's a wrinkle worth naming honestly: even where BNPL-aware scores exist, most lenders you interact with day to day — a mortgage lender, an auto lender, a new credit card issuer — may still be pulling an older score model that doesn't see your BNPL activity at all, because BNPL providers don't universally report to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion the way traditional lenders do. That's likely to keep changing as the new models roll out, but it means the practical impact of your BNPL use on any specific application still depends heavily on which lender, which bureau, and which score version is actually being pulled.
Estimate your BNPL score impact
How I calculated this: FICO hasn't published the exact scorecard weighting for its BNPL-aware models (Score 10 BNPL), so the estimator below models the directionally documented effects from FICO's own announcement — on-time BNPL payments help, missed payments hurt, and a pile of simultaneous BNPL loans reads like new-account risk — rather than claiming to replicate FICO's proprietary formula. Treat the output as a realistic direction and rough magnitude, not a predicted score.
Interactive · illustrative BNPL score impact
How might BNPL activity move your score?
Open BNPL loans3
Starting score690
Estimated score: 696 (+6 points)
Estimated new score
0
Illustrative only — FICO's study found impacts within ±10 points for 85%+ of on-time users; your result depends on your full credit file. Not credit advice.
BNPL score impact estimate — data table
Starting score
690
Open BNPL loans
3
Payment status
On time
Estimated new score
696
Here's What I'd Actually Do
Pay every BNPL installment on time, every time, and treat it exactly like a real credit obligation — because it increasingly is one for scoring purposes.
Don't assume BNPL is invisible to lenders anymore. That assumption is getting less true every quarter.
Focus your actual score-improvement effort on payment history and utilization — they still dwarf any single new-account effect, BNPL included.
If you're managing old medical debt, know the bureaus' 2022-2023 changes still apply even though the broader CFPB rule was struck down — paid and small medical collections are still generally excluded.
Check which score a lender is actually pulling before assuming a new BNPL-aware model applies to your specific application.
Frequently Asked Questions
Starting Fall 2025, it can. FICO's new Score 10 BNPL models are the first to factor buy-now-pay-later loans into your score. In a FICO study of over 500,000 consumers, on-time BNPL use moved scores within ±10 points for more than 85%; missed payments can lower them more.
This is educational content, not credit or financial advice. Scoring models and regulations change. Check your own credit reports at annualcreditreport.com and consult a professional before making credit decisions. See the full disclaimer.
Sujit Karki|||5 min read