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It's not just Americans, the BNPL industry has seem tremendous growth around the world. China reports credit card usage quadrupling and alongside that BNPL schemes, Europe is expected to see the BNPL industry hit close to $1 trillion by 2028.

It's a global phenomenon unfortunately.

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I recently learned that Klarna is a Swedish company, and was founded in 2005 [0], which surprised me because I don't remember seeing it anywhere until the past ~5 years, when it started appearing as an option on nearly every checkout page.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klarna

This is terrifying. Googling this definitely raised my stomach acid levels.

Who holds all the debt?

Every single debt is underwritten individually by a originating bank. Within a few days the BNPL provider is expected to buy that debt back once the remittances to vendors have been made. The BNPL company then takes on the debt.

BNPL makes their money by charging a network fee. AFAIK AfterPay charges about 7% and this is meant to cover the debt charges from the banks and administration fees.

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