Italy BNPL volumes jump 23%
- CRIF said Italy’s buy-now-pay-later lending rose 23% in the second half of 2025, extending a two-year surge in installment credit for online purchases. - The sharpest signal was substitution: traditional “small ticket” loans below €1,500 fell 10%, while BNPL volumes were up 220% from early 2022. - CRIF said risk stayed below comparable small-loan products as more first-time borrowers entered the market. (crif.it)
Buy now, pay later kept gaining ground in Italy in the second half of 2025, with financed volumes up 23% from a year earlier, according to CRIF. (crif.it) CRIF said the increase left BNPL volumes 220% above the first half of 2022, showing how quickly the product has moved from a niche online checkout option into a mainstream short-term credit tool. (crif.it) (borsaitaliana.it) At the same time, traditional small-ticket consumer loans under €1,500 fell 10% in the second half of 2025. CRIF said that drop points to borrowers shifting toward digital installment products rather than abandoning small-value credit altogether. (crif.it) (finanza.repubblica.it) The average BNPL purchase remained relatively small. CRIF said 60% of contracts were for less than €1,000, reinforcing that the product is concentrated in everyday spending rather than large durable-goods financing. (crif.it) The biggest spending category was personal products at 31.9%, followed by clothing and tourism at 16.9%, and home products behind them. That mix tracks the way BNPL is used at checkout for discretionary consumer purchases. (crif.it) (telenorba.it) CRIF also said 55% of BNPL users were women, and the share of “new to credit” borrowers rose 19%. That suggests the product is still widening access, especially among people who may not have used other consumer-credit products before. (crif.it) (ilgiornaleditalia.it) On credit quality, CRIF said BNPL risk stayed low and below the levels seen in traditional small-ticket installment loans. That point has become central to the industry’s case that BNPL is not just growing fast, but doing so without the same loss profile as older products. (crif.it) The data lands as Italy’s broader household-credit market has been recovering, with Assofin, CRIF and Prometeia reporting stronger consumer-credit and mortgage origination through 2025. In that setting, BNPL is taking a larger share of the smallest end of borrowing rather than rising in isolation. (ilgiornaleditalia.it) (assofin.it) The latest snapshot from CRIF is simple: Italians are still borrowing small amounts, but more of that borrowing is now happening in split payments at checkout instead of through classic sub-€1,500 loans. (crif.it)
