Deloitte’s holiday retail forecast, published September 10, doesn’t mention buy now, pay later once. It didn’t need to. The firm projects online holiday sales will grow 7.5% to 8.4% between November 2026 and January 2027. Apply that same growth rate to the $20 billion Americans put on BNPL installment plans last holiday season (a figure Adobe Analytics confirmed back in January) and you clear $22 billion before New Year’s. That’s the math industry trackers ran within days of the forecast dropping, and it’s not a reach. BNPL grew 9.8% year over year last season. This year’s e-commerce growth rate alone gets holiday BNPL spending most of the way there.

Here’s the part that matters more than the round number: a separate survey landed a few weeks earlier with an uglier finding. Money Under 30 reports that 44% of Americans expect to carry holiday debt into 2027. Not “might.” Expect. The forecast and the survey aren’t really two stories. They’re the same shopping season, viewed from opposite ends: what retailers think you’ll spend, and what happens to you after you spend it.

We’re writing this in late September on purpose. Black Friday offers start landing in inboxes in a few weeks, and every one of them will have a “Pay in 4” button sitting right next to the price. Building a number before that button shows up is a completely different exercise than doing math in January with a statement in front of you.

Quick Verdict

2026 holiday BNPL spending (projected)	$22 billion+, derived from Deloitte’s e-commerce growth forecast applied to Adobe’s confirmed 2025 base
2025 holiday BNPL spending (confirmed)	$20 billion online, up 9.8% YoY (+$1.8B) — Adobe Analytics
Shoppers who expect to carry debt into 2027	44% — Money Under 30
Average expected post-holiday debt	$408 per shopper; ~$48.6 billion nationally
Average gift spending per person, 2026	$708 (PwC) to $950 (Omnisend, via Money Under 30)
Total 2026 holiday retail sales (forecast)	$1.70–$1.71 trillion, Nov 2026–Jan 2027 — Deloitte
What to actually do	Set the number before Black Friday, not after the first statement arrives in January

Where the $22 Billion Holiday BNPL Spending Number Comes From

Let’s be straight about this, since it’s the headline number: Deloitte did not publish a BNPL figure. What Deloitte published is a growth rate: online holiday sales up 7.5% to 8.4%, total retail sales (in-store and online, excluding autos and gas) landing between $1.70 trillion and $1.71 trillion for the November-through-January stretch. That’s the base forecast, and it’s a real one, covered by Forbes and PRNewswire the same week.

The $22 billion is what happens when you carry Deloitte’s growth rate over to Adobe’s confirmed number from last year. Adobe measured $20 billion in BNPL online spend for the 2025 holiday season, an all-time high. Grow that base by even the low end of Deloitte’s e-commerce range and BNPL clears $22 billion this year. It’s a reasonable extrapolation, not an official industry figure, and I’d rather tell you that plainly than let a headline number pass as something Deloitte actually said.

Should you trust the extrapolation anyway? Probably. BNPL usage has beaten overall e-commerce growth in every recent holiday season. It grew 9.8% last year while total online holiday spending grew in the mid-single digits. If that pattern holds again, $22 billion is closer to a floor than a ceiling.

The Debt Doesn’t Wait for January

Forty-four percent expecting to carry holiday debt into 2027 is the number that should actually change how you shop this year, more than the aggregate BNPL total. Money Under 30’s reporting attaches real dollars to it: the average shopper who expects to carry a balance expects it to run about $408, and scaled across the country, that’s an estimated $48.6 billion in post-holiday debt sitting on cards and installment plans come January.

This isn’t a new pattern, either. It’s just the same one showing up again. When Talker Research surveyed 2,000 holiday shoppers on Affirm’s behalf last November, 70% of credit card users expected to carry a balance into this year, and 18% said flatly they wouldn’t have it paid off until June or later. That survey measured intent before the debt existed. We’re now on the other side of that horizon, which means some real share of last year’s shoppers are only just catching up, right as this year’s season is about to layer a fresh balance on top of whatever’s left.

Thirty-nine percent of shoppers say they’ll use BNPL for holiday purchases this year, per the Omnisend survey Money Under 30 cites. That’s not a small niche. It’s a plurality-adjacent share of shoppers treating installment plans as a default payment method, not a special case for one big-ticket item.

What BNPL Actually Costs You (and What It Doesn’t)

The “it’s not real debt if there’s no interest” framing is half right and worth taking seriously, not dismissing. Pay-in-4 plans from Klarna and Afterpay genuinely charge 0% interest when you pay on time. Affirm does too, on its short-term plans. We laid out the full mechanics in our Klarna vs. Affirm comparison: Klarna caps late fees at $7 per missed payment (25% of the order), Affirm charges no late fee at all on any plan, and Afterpay charges $10 plus another $7 if you’re still unpaid after a week. None of that is nothing, but none of it is a 24% APR card balance either.

Where it gets genuinely risky is stacking. A $600 credit card balance and $600 spread across two open Klarna plans look identical on a napkin. They aren’t. The card balance compounds at whatever your APR is for as long as you carry it. The BNPL balance is a fixed four-payment schedule that ends on a specific date, assuming you don’t miss one. We went deep on what BNPL debt does to your credit score. Short version: Affirm reports Pay-in-4 activity to Experian and TransUnion, Klarna and Afterpay generally don’t unless an account goes to collections. Different apps, different consequences, same checkout button.

The problem isn’t any single Pay-in-4 plan. It’s that none of the apps show you your combined balance across the others. Klarna doesn’t know what you owe Affirm. Your credit card issuer doesn’t know about either. If you’re opening a new plan every time a retailer offers one, the total gets bigger than the number sitting in your head, because you’re only tracking whichever app you looked at most recently.

How Much Should You Actually Budget for Holiday Shopping in 2026?

Start somewhere between $708 and $950 per person, then adjust for your own household. That’s the range this year’s two most-cited surveys landed on. PwC’s June survey of 4,093 consumers put average gift spending at $708. Omnisend’s August survey of over 1,100 shoppers put total holiday spending, gifts included, closer to $950. Beyond the top-line number, here’s how to build the actual budget:

1. Separate gifts from everything else. $708 is a gift-specific number. Food, decorations, travel, and hosting are on top of that, and they’re where budgets quietly blow up.
2. Set the number in writing before Black Friday, not during it. A number decided in a calm September mindset holds up better against a 30%-off countdown timer than a number you’re inventing at checkout.
3. Decide your BNPL rule now, not at the button. Something as simple as “only for one planned purchase, never stacked with another open plan” turns a impulse decision into a pre-made one.
4. Build the gap with a short-term sinking fund, not a card. Even five or six weeks of small automatic transfers into a separate account changes what you’re reaching for at checkout. Our guide to automating savings covers the mechanics.
5. Check what you’re already carrying before adding to it. If back-to-school spending is still an open balance for you, see what to do with that debt first. A chunk of parents carrying that debt are heading into the holidays with it, per that survey data, and the two balances don’t compete for separate dollars. They compete for the same paycheck.

The Best Budgeting Apps for Tracking Holiday Spending

A number in your head isn’t a budget. Something has to actually track it against what’s hitting your accounts, especially once BNPL installments and gift-card purchases are landing on different schedules than your regular bills.

Rocket Money is the simplest starting point if you just want visibility: its free tier tracks spending and net worth, and Premium ($6–$12/month, you set the price) adds unlimited custom budget categories, useful if “holiday” needs to be its own line rather than folded into general shopping. YNAB is the better fit if you want to actively assign every dollar before you spend it, which matters more in a five-week stretch where spending is concentrated and irregular. If you’re managing this with a partner, our budgeting apps for couples roundup covers the shared-visibility tools built for exactly that.

Whichever app you pick, the job it needs to do this season is narrow: show you total holiday spending, including anything on a Pay-in-4 plan, against the number you set in September, not January.

Who Should Actually Skip BNPL This Year

If you’re debt-free heading into the season and using BNPL for one specific, planned purchase: the 0%-interest math genuinely works in your favor, assuming you won’t miss a payment. This is the use case these products were designed for.

If you’re already carrying a revolving credit card balance: adding a new BNPL plan doesn’t cost you interest, but it does add a fixed payment competing with your card minimum for the same paycheck. Do the math before you add it, not after.

If you’re the type who’d open a new Pay-in-4 plan at three different retailers this season: that’s the exact behavior showing up in the 44%-carrying-debt-into-2027 number. No single plan is the problem. The fourth one you didn’t total up against the first three is.

If cash flow is genuinely tight right now: BNPL and a credit card aren’t your only two options. Cash advance apps cover short-term gaps without creating installment debt, and if you’re already juggling multiple open balances, a debt payoff app that models an actual payoff date beats guessing at the total in your head.

The Bottom Line

Whether holiday BNPL spending lands at exactly $22 billion or somewhere close to it, the direction isn’t in question. It grew 9.8% last year and every forecast for this year points the same way. The number worth building a plan around isn’t that one anyway. It’s the 44% of shoppers who already expect to be carrying this year’s spending into 2027, and the $408 average balance attached to it. That’s not a January problem. It’s a September one, which is exactly when you’re reading this. Set the budget now, decide your BNPL rule before the first Black Friday email lands, and check what you’re already carrying before you add a fresh balance on top of it.

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Figures from Deloitte’s Sept. 10, 2026 holiday retail forecast, Adobe Analytics’ 2025 holiday shopping report, Money Under 30’s 2026 holiday budget reporting (citing Omnisend’s August 2026 survey of 1,100+ shoppers), PwC’s Holiday Outlook 2026, and Talker Research’s survey for Affirm, fielded among 2,000 respondents in November 2025. The $22 billion 2026 BNPL figure is an extrapolation from Deloitte’s growth forecast applied to Adobe’s confirmed base, not an official industry figure. Verify current forecasts as the season progresses.