It depends which app you use — that’s the short, direct answer to “does BNPL hurt your credit score” in 2026. On June 23, 2025, FICO announced that its new FICO Score 10 BNPL Suite would fold buy now, pay later data into your credit score for the first time — a real structural change to how installment loans on Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay could eventually count toward your score. That was over a year ago. And here’s the thing nobody cleared up before back-to-school shopping hit: whether your BNPL purchases actually touch your credit score in 2026 still depends entirely on which app you tapped “pay in 4” on.

Same purchase. Same on-time payments. Different credit outcome, because Affirm reports Pay-in-4 loans to the bureaus and Klarna and Afterpay still don’t. That’s not a hypothetical edge case — nearly half of shoppers say they’re using BNPL for back-to-school spending this year, up from 39% in 2025, which means a lot of people are about to open four or five installment plans across apps that treat their credit history very differently.

Quick Verdict

FICO’s BNPL scoring change	Announced June 23, 2025. FICO Score 10 BNPL Suite was supposed to reach the market that fall.
Where it stands now	Still not widely in use among lenders as of mid-2026 — new score models take years to get adopted, and this one needs BNPL data at scale to matter
Affirm	Reports Pay-in-4 to Experian (since April 1, 2025) and TransUnion (since May 1, 2025)
Klarna	Reports Monthly Financing loans only. Pay in 4 — its most-used product — is not reported
Afterpay	Doesn’t report Pay-in-4 automatically. Opt-in Experian program only
Why Klarna and Afterpay are holding back	They argue bureaus can’t yet handle BNPL data accurately, and reporting it could unfairly ding people making every payment on time

What FICO Actually Changed in June 2025

The announcement itself was narrower than the headlines made it sound. FICO didn’t retrofit BNPL data into the score everyone already has. It built two new models — FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL — designed to sit alongside the existing FICO Score 10 Suite, not replace it. Lenders would have to choose to pull the new version. Nothing forces them to.

FICO’s own framing, from Julie May, the company’s VP of B2B scores: the goal was to help lenders “more accurately evaluate credit readiness, especially for consumers whose first credit experience is through BNPL products.” That’s a real gap. Millions of people, especially younger shoppers, are building a payment history entirely inside apps that traditional scoring never saw. A score that accounts for that could genuinely help thin-file borrowers — assuming there’s data flowing into it to account for.

That’s the catch. A scoring model is only as good as what gets fed into it, and as of mid-2026, what gets fed into it is inconsistent by design.

Does BNPL Hurt Your Credit Score in 2026?

It depends on which app and which product. Affirm reports its Pay-in-4 loans to Experian and TransUnion, so on-time and missed payments can show up on your credit file. Klarna reports only its longer Monthly Financing loans — not Pay in 4, the product most people actually use. Afterpay doesn’t report Pay-in-4 activity at all unless you’re enrolled in its opt-in Experian program. Same behavior, three different outcomes.

Here’s what that looks like broken out by app:

1. Affirm Pay-in-4 — reported to Experian and TransUnion. Payment history can appear on your credit file starting with loans issued after those April/May 2025 dates.
2. Klarna Pay in 4 — not reported. Klarna uses a soft credit check to approve you, but your four biweekly payments don’t hit your file unless the account goes to collections.
3. Klarna Monthly Financing — reported to TransUnion and Experian. This is the one Klarna product that behaves like a normal installment loan on your report.
4. Afterpay Pay-in-4 — not reported by default. An opt-in program with Experian exists, but it’s not automatic.
5. Any BNPL loan sent to collections — reported regardless of the app’s normal policy. Miss enough payments and it becomes a collections account like any other debt, which absolutely hits your score.

We broke this down in more detail in our Klarna vs. Affirm comparison, and the split hasn’t changed since: Affirm is the one BNPL app where consistent Pay-in-4 payments can realistically help build a thin credit file. Klarna and Afterpay, for the product most people actually use, still can’t.

Why Klarna and Afterpay Are Still Holding Out

This isn’t an oversight. Both companies have said, on the record, that they’re not reporting Pay-in-4 data on purpose. Afterpay has stated it won’t start reporting “until we see concrete evidence that BNPL data reflecting responsible payment behavior will help, not hurt, the credit scores of our customers.” Klarna’s position runs along similar lines — the concern is that credit bureaus and scoring models aren’t yet built to interpret short-term, frequent BNPL installment activity the way they interpret a mortgage or a credit card, and a wave of four-payment loans landing on a file every few weeks could read as risk signals that aren’t actually risky.

There’s a real argument buried in there. Someone running six overlapping Pay-in-4 plans at once looks, on paper, like someone juggling six loans — even if every payment clears on time and the total dollar amount is small. Whether that argument is really about protecting consumers or protecting a growth product from a scoring model that might make it look worse, reasonable people disagree. Affirm made the opposite bet: report everything, let the chips fall. So far that bet hasn’t visibly hurt its user growth.

Worth saying plainly: this isn’t charity from either app. Not reporting also means a customer with three open Klarna Pay-in-4 plans and a maxed-out credit card doesn’t look any riskier to Klarna’s own underwriting than someone with a clean file — because Klarna’s the only one who can see all three plans at once. The bureaus can’t cross-reference what they never receive.

Where FICO Score 10 BNPL Actually Stands, One Year Later

Here’s the part that got lost after the initial announcement cycle: as of mid-2026, FICO Score 10 BNPL still isn’t widely in use among lenders. New scoring models take years to get adopted industry-wide under normal circumstances — the most commonly used FICO score overall, FICO Score 8, dates to 2009. (Mortgage lenders are their own case — they still lean on the older FICO 2, 4, and 5 models instead.) Stack a second problem on top of that normal lag: the new BNPL-inclusive models can only reflect BNPL data that actually reaches the bureaus, and right now that’s a partial picture at best. Two of the three biggest BNPL apps aren’t furnishing their most-used product.

So even if a lender adopts FICO Score 10 BNPL tomorrow, it would see Affirm’s Pay-in-4 activity and Klarna’s Monthly Financing loans, and essentially nothing from Klarna’s or Afterpay’s Pay-in-4 business — which is the bulk of what most BNPL users actually do. A credit score built to account for BNPL behavior is only as complete as the data flowing into it, and right now that data has a hole in it roughly the size of two major providers.

What This Means If You’re Using BNPL This Back-to-School Season

Close to half of shoppers say they’re leaning on BNPL for school shopping this year, and a chunk of them expect it to cover more than half their total spend. If you’re one of them, the practical takeaway isn’t “avoid BNPL” — it’s “know what each app is actually doing with your payment history.”

If you’re trying to build credit with limited history: Affirm’s Pay-in-4 is currently the only mainstream BNPL product where consistent on-time payments have a realistic shot at showing up as a positive signal on your file. That’s not guaranteed to move your score yet, since not every scoring model in active use pulls this data — but it’s the only one of the three where the data even exists to be used.

If you’re worried about a missed payment hurting your score: Klarna and Afterpay’s Pay-in-4 products are the safer bet in the narrow sense that a slip-up won’t hit your credit file directly — assuming it doesn’t escalate to collections. That’s not really a feature so much as a byproduct of them not reporting anything at all, good or bad.

If you’re running multiple plans across apps: none of the three BNPL apps show you your combined outstanding balance across the others, and neither do the bureaus right now, since two of them aren’t getting the data. That’s on you to track. If you’ve got several open plans and you’re losing the thread, a debt payoff tool that can model your actual payoff timeline does more good than assuming the credit bureaus have your back — because for Klarna and Afterpay Pay-in-4, right now, they don’t.

If you already have a full credit file: the BNPL reporting gap matters less. It’s most consequential for people using BNPL as an entry point into credit, which is exactly the population FICO said it built the new scores to help — and exactly the population currently getting a partial, inconsistent picture depending on which checkout button they hit.

How to Check What’s Actually on Your File

Don’t guess. If you’ve used BNPL this year, pull your actual reports and look.

1. Get your free reports at AnnualCreditReport.com, the only site required by federal law to provide all three bureaus’ files at no cost.
2. Search for Affirm specifically. If you’ve used Pay-in-4 since spring 2025, it should be there on Experian and TransUnion.
3. Search for Klarna. You should only see an entry if you’ve used Monthly Financing — Pay in 4 shouldn’t appear unless it went to collections.
4. Same check for Afterpay, unless you specifically opted into its Experian reporting program.
5. If something looks off, or a Pay-in-4 account you never missed a payment on somehow shows up as delinquent, that’s worth a dispute — our guide on vetting finance apps and checking your file covers what to do when a credit report entry doesn’t match what actually happened.

If you’re weighing which app to use in the first place, not just for credit purposes but for the total cost and fee structure, our full Klarna vs. Affirm vs. Afterpay comparison breaks down late fees and APRs side by side — credit reporting is one factor, not the only one. And if you’re specifically weighing BNPL against other short-term financing during a high-spend stretch like back-to-school season, rising costs on essentials like laptops are part of why more families are reaching for installment plans in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does using Klarna affect your credit score?

Mostly no, for Pay in 4 — Klarna’s most common product doesn’t report to Experian or TransUnion, so on-time or missed payments generally won’t appear on your credit file unless the debt goes to collections. Klarna’s Monthly Financing loans are different: those are reported and function like a standard installment loan on your report.

Does Affirm report to credit bureaus?

Yes. Affirm reports its Pay-in-4 and longer installment loans to Experian, effective for loans issued on or after April 1, 2025, and to TransUnion for loans issued on or after May 1, 2025. That includes both positive payment history and missed payments.

What is FICO Score 10 BNPL and is it being used yet?

FICO Score 10 BNPL is a credit scoring model FICO announced in June 2025 that factors buy now, pay later loan data into your score, alongside the existing FICO Score 10 Suite. As of mid-2026, it’s not yet widely used by lenders — new scoring models typically take years to see broad adoption, and this one is also limited by the fact that Klarna and Afterpay aren’t furnishing their Pay-in-4 data for it to draw on.

Can BNPL hurt my credit score if I miss a payment?

It depends on the app. A missed Affirm payment can appear on your Experian or TransUnion file since Affirm reports that activity. A missed Klarna or Afterpay Pay-in-4 payment generally won’t show up directly — unless the account is charged off and sent to collections, at which point it hits your file the same way any other collections account would, regardless of which app it started on.

The Bottom Line

A year after FICO said it would start counting BNPL behavior toward your credit score, the honest answer to “does BNPL hurt your credit” is still: it depends which app you picked at checkout, not what you actually did with the loan. Affirm reports your Pay-in-4 activity to two bureaus. Klarna and Afterpay don’t, and they’ve said plainly why — they don’t trust the system to treat that data fairly yet. Whether or not you buy that reasoning, it means two people making identical on-time payments on identical purchases can end up with completely different footprints on their credit file, purely based on which logo was on the checkout button. Know which one you’re using, check your actual report instead of assuming, and don’t count on any BNPL app to build your credit for you until you’ve confirmed it’s actually reporting anything at all.

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FICO Score 10 BNPL Suite details from FICO’s June 23, 2025 announcement and FICO’s blog. Adoption status from Benzinga. Affirm’s credit bureau reporting dates from its TransUnion partnership announcement. Klarna and Afterpay’s non-reporting stance from PaymentsJournal. Back-to-school BNPL usage figures from WFSB. Reporting practices and product terms are subject to change — verify current policy directly with Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay before relying on this for a specific credit decision.