Caleb Martin Randel @CalebRandel - Twitter Profile

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almost 8 years ago · Lake Charles

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.

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Tracy Shuchart (𝒞𝒽𝒾 )

@chigrl

7 months ago

Can we break this down a bit, because the headline numbers most definitly do NOT reflect what is going on beneath the surface. The elphant in the room is Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Black Friday 2025's record numbers tell a specific demographic story when you layer in who's actually using BNPL to finance those purchases. The $11.8 billion in online sales and the projected $761.8 million in BNPL spending on Black Friday alone came disproportionately from two groups: young mobile shoppers and high earning households. Forty one percent of shoppers ages 16 to 24 used BNPL, and they did it overwhelmingly on mobile devices, which accounted for 79 percent of all BNPL transactions. These younger consumers increased their BNPL usage by 87 percent for millennials and 15 percent for Gen Z, while simultaneously cutting credit card use. But here's where the Black Friday story gets interesting. Remember that the richest 10 percent of Americans now account for 48 percent of all consumer spending? That same top income bracket is also heavily using BNPL. Thirty eight percent of households earning over $100,000 use buy now pay later services, and they increased that usage by 42 percent heading into this holiday season. These aren't people who need financing. They're people choosing to finance purchases they could pay cash for. When Salesforce reported that luxury apparel and accessories were among the top Black Friday sellers, and jewelry sales surged 480 percent compared to October averages, those purchases were increasingly financed through BNPL. High earners are the heavy users, meaning frequent purchases and larger amounts. And they're showing 49 percent delinquency rates, the highest of any income group. They're stacking multiple BNPL accounts across platforms, financing luxury consumption on installments, and missing payments at rates that should alarm anyone paying attention. The lower income groups tell a different story with the same tool. Those earning under $50,000 increased BNPL usage by 33 percent, but they're light users going for smaller, essential purchases. A quarter of all BNPL users now finance groceries, up from 14 percent earlier in 2024. When you're putting weekly food on installment plans, that's not strategic budgeting. That's financial distress. Black and Hispanic women, who use BNPL at 25 percent rates compared to 11 percent for White women, are participating in Black Friday through financing mechanisms that let them stretch budgets already strained by inflation. Sixty four percent of all Black Friday shoppers planned to use credit cards or BNPL to afford their purchases. That's not optional convenience. That's necessary financing to participate in consumption. The demographics explain why spending hit records while unit volumes declined. Younger shoppers financing purchases on mobile devices drove transaction counts. High earners financing luxury goods on BNPL drove dollar amounts. Lower income shoppers financing necessities kept participation rates high even as they bought fewer actual items. And all of it happened through financing mechanisms that don't show up on credit reports, making everyone look more creditworthy than they actually are. So Black Friday 2025's record came from the collision of three forces: wealthy consumers financing discretionary luxury purchases they don't need credit to afford, young consumers financing everything on mobile because that's their primary shopping channel, and financially stressed consumers financing essentials just to maintain baseline consumption. Half of all Black Friday shoppers used some form of BNPL. That's not a payment preference. That's a structural shift in how Americans fund consumption, concentrated among the young, the wealthy who are overleveraged, and the financially fragile who have no alternatives.

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Caleb Martin Randel

@CalebRandel

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