BNPL spend approached $1 billion on Cyber Monday—but failed to keep up with overall sales

The news: Buy now, pay later (BNPL) spending reached $991.2 million on Cyber Monday, per Adobe Analytics, a 5.5% YoY increase.

• This is a large chunk of overall Cyber Monday sales, which totaled $13.3 billion.
• Overall, Adobe predicts BNPL spend during the full holiday season will total $18.5 billion, up from $16.6 billion last year.

The bigger picture: While BNPL’s share of Cyber Monday sales is significant, the payment method grew slower than overall sales, which increased 7.3% YoY.

• BNPL buyers tend to be more budget-conscious and may therefore be limiting their holiday spending this year compared with higher income consumers.
• One-third of US consumers plan to spend less this holiday season, per Bankrate. Another 43% plan to spend the same, and just 24% plan to spend more.

Our take: To boost their growth, BNPL players may need to make some changes.

• They could invest more heavily into expanding their in-store presence, a still limited spending area for BNPL. For example, they could add Apple’s NFC tech to their apps to enable contactless in-store payments without the need for a debit card or QR code.
• They could also grow their acceptance network into higher-spend categories like travel—like Affirm’s partnership with Hotels.com.

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