We interviewed Andréa Toucinho, Director of Studies at Partelya Consulting, about the latest whitepaper on the BNPL market in Europe and the challenges of the payments market in the upcoming years.
You recently released a new whitepaper – ‘Buy Now Pay Later: What Are the Challenges for the Payments Market’ – can you provide some additional details about the research and its main findings?
As Director of Studies, Prospective and Training of the French consulting company Partelya Consulting, each year I release a whitepaper exploring the field of payments. In 2025, the topic is Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). Several elements explain this choice:
- The continuous evolution of BNPL’s use in Europe and the interest of many actors about this market;
- The evolution of regulation and, particularly, the second consumer credit directive that aims to bring more protection for the users in this market;
- Certain concerns observed among different professionals in payments about the balance between access and protection in the field of BNPL.
- The specific methodology for drafting this whitepaper (and all our publication) consisted of documentary research, interviews with different professionals in payments based in France and Europe, key insights of different working groups, and events related to payments.
The main findings of the current whitepaper are:
- A strong development of the Buy Now, Pay Later trend in Europe and the particularities of different (for instance, France and Southern Europe countries are interested in split payments, whereas Germany and Benelux countries prefer deferred payments).
- Growing concerns among industry players about the protection of consumers – even if BNPL is not a direct cause of over indebtedness, the risk lies in the lack of control, hence the necessity to evolve towards a more responsible market. For instance, many professionals agree that BNPL must not be applied in all the transactions, while some players recommend naming certain key practices to ensure a balance between access and protection in this market.
- The necessity of balance is also shared by the regulators through the second Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) that brings more protection to end-users.
- Given the new regulatory context, many innovations in the payments area can become tools for the BNPL market, including Open Banking, which represents an opportunity to facilitate the scoring. Similarly, digital identity can prove to be a powerful tool in reinforcing strong KYC standards.
- Today, BNPL is considered a real value-added service in the payments offers – as proven by EPI Company that aims integrating an option of instant financing within the Wero digital wallet. As a result, even if BNPL and payments are managed separately in a regulatory way, there are many interactions between these two markets.
Based on your research, which are the three main trends for Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) in 2025 and what can we expect for 2026?
BNPL is poised to continue its growth in the following years thanks to several initiatives and collaborations put in place by market players, payment companies, and retailers. Nevertheless, given the new regulatory context of CCD2 and the maturity of the BNPL market, many professionals expect a more stable growth of this market sector in the future.
Certain growth potentials of the BNPL sector could also be identified in the B2B sector and for in-store payments (since BNPL was mainly developed for ecommerce).
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) enters new technology sectors, how can we expect for it to transform the current BNPL landscape and what are the main challenges for BNPL players when implementing it?
For many players in the BNPL sector and the payments industry, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is identified as an opportunity and can be used for risk scoring or client ID verification and onboarding. However, it is yet early to analyse the full impact of AI innovation in the payments market, as the technology is not completely developed and certain models must be previously built.
On the other hand, artificial intelligence can be easily weaponised by fraudsters, hence the need develop new security tools to calculate the risk of this new tool. This aspect is already integrated into the payments ecosystem and represents an important topic in today’s debates about security in the payments landscape.
About the author
Expert in payments and financial services, Andréa Toucinho is Director of Studies, Prospective, and Training of Partelya Consulting and Country Ambassador for France of European Women Payments Network (EWPN). Considered as one of the 50 leaders of the industry by Harrington Starr, she regularly participates in European and international events about payments and innovative financial services (MPE, MoneyLive, Web Summit, Africa Pay ID Expo) and organises events and trainings on payments for France and Europe.
About Partelya Consulting
Created in 2008, Partelya Consulting is a French consulting company specialised in payments and innovative financial services. Member of the French Association du Paiement, Partelya Consulting contributed to many projects linked with this ecosystem such as the implementation of new payments tools, compliance, or even strategic issues both for companies and big institutional actors.
