Offer Buy Now Pay Later at your checkout

Buy Now Pay Later lets your customers spread or delay payment for what they buy from you. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) calls the interest-free kind deferred payment credit, and it has regulated the lenders who provide it since 15 July 2026. As the business that offers it at checkout, you do not need FCA permission.

What counts as deferred payment credit

Credit at your checkout is deferred payment credit if all of these apply:

• it is a fixed amount of credit to pay for goods or services you sell
• it is provided by a lender that has an arrangement with you, not by you
• the customer pays no interest or other charges
• it is repaid in 12 or fewer payments within 12 months of the agreement

This covers the common pay-in-3, pay-in-4 and pay-in-30-days products. Agreements your customers entered into before 15 July 2026 stay outside regulation.

Check your lender can lend

Before you sign up with a provider, or if you already work with one, check it on the FCA Financial Services Register or on the FCA list of firms with a temporary permission.

Expect your lender to ask you to change how your staff and marketing describe Buy Now Pay Later, so that customers can see it is credit. Make sure your agreement with the lender sets out what it needs from you.

When credit at checkout still needs permission

Introducing customers to a lender is normally credit broking, which needs FCA permission, and the exclusion covers only deferred payment credit. If you also introduce customers to credit that charges interest or fees, or that is repaid over more than 12 months or in more than 12 payments, you are credit broking and need FCA permission for it. Carrying on a regulated activity without authorisation is a criminal offence.