FICO's decision to fold Buy Now, Pay Later loans into consumer credit scores turns an invisible $200 billion lending category into scored data — creating new revenue for bureaus while exposing loan stacking risks for originators.
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FICO adds BNPL data to credit scores, reshaping $7T lending market
FICO's decision to fold Buy Now, Pay Later loans into consumer credit scores turns an invisible $200 billion lending category into scored data — creating new revenue for bureaus while exposing loan stacking risks for originators.
Fair Isaac Corp. began incorporating BNPL tradelines into its FICO Score 10 models in fall 2025, after a 500,000-consumer study found more than 85% of borrowers saw their scores move within 10 points either way. The change, effective June 2026 across all major bureaus, means every Pay-in-4 purchase now sits in the same file as a mortgage or credit card.
"The inclusion of BNPL data gives lenders a complete picture of consumer indebtedness for the first time," said Pierre Raymond, a fintech analyst covering credit infrastructure. "What was invisible is now a line item in the underwriting decision."
Affirm Holdings began furnishing all pay-over-time loans to Experian on April 1, 2025, and to TransUnion on May 1, 2025 — including the Pay-in-4 product that had been the category's most opaque piece. The company reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.04 billion, up 33% year over year, with gross merchandise volume of $11.6 billion, up 35%. It reached GAAP profitability with net income of $102.9 million, or $0.30 per share.
Who sells the data, who becomes the data
The structural shift splits the affected companies into two camps. On the sell side, Fair Isaac Corp. owns the scoring model itself. It reported fiscal second-quarter 2026 revenue of $692 million, up 39%, with GAAP earnings per share of $11.14 and full-year guidance near $35.60. The stock trades at roughly 35 times earnings — a premium that already discounts steady adoption of the new BNPL score. TransUnion, the bureau receiving Affirm's data, reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.25 billion, up 14%, and trades near 20 times trailing earnings, roughly half FICO's multiple. Equifax sits in the same beneficiary bucket as the third bureau.
On the both-sides camp sit the originators. Affirm and SoFi Technologies furnish the data that gets scored while also consuming bureau data to underwrite their own loans. SoFi reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.1 billion, up 43%, with net income of $166.7 million and earnings per share of $0.12. PayPal and Block occupy the same dual position across the wider payments field.
The transparency trade-off
When BNPL loans were invisible, a borrower could stack four or five across providers without any underwriter seeing the pile. The same furnishing that lets a responsible borrower build credit also surfaces the stacking patterns that could prompt lenders to tighten approvals. FICO's study found that consumers with five or more BNPL loans saw scores hold flat or tick higher — cutting against the assumption that frequent use signals distress — but the data is early and delinquency trends remain unproven at scale.
The moment to watch is the first quarter a lender publicly underwrites on FICO Score 10 BNPL and discloses it on an earnings call. Until then, the new tradeline is a line in a file waiting to be priced. For investors, the question is whether FICO's 35x multiple already prices in adoption that may take years — or whether TransUnion's 20x multiple offers a cheaper way to play the same structural shift.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
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