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MARKET TREND

Buy Now, Pay… Never? The Hidden Cost of BNPL

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  • 5 min •

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is experiencing explosive growth in France: between €11 and €18 billion in 2025, with projections of between €16 and €38 billion in 2030¹. Alma, Oney, Klarna… The number of players is multiplying. But with growth comes a problem: fraud is exploding .

The alarming figures

Fraud rate: 3 to 4%²

Compared to less than 1% for other payment methods

34 to 41% of users

Have made late payments³

51% delays

Among 18-25 year olds³

The BNPL has become a prime target for fraudsters, who exploit several vulnerabilities.

Fraud techniques

1
Synthetic identities
A combination of real data (stolen bank details, fake documents) and fictitious data (created email address) results in a credible but fake profile. This is how fraudsters manage to create accounts.
2
The "first legitimate payment"
The fraudster pays the first installment to establish trust, then disappears. Traditional detection systems don't see anything amiss.
3
The "Friendly Fraud"
A consumer claims not to have authorized the transaction and requests a refund. The merchant and the supplier BNPL absorb the loss.

New sectors, new risks

BNPL is no longer limited to online commerce. It now extends to travel bookings (airline tickets, hotels), healthcare services (dental care, optical care), and even B2B for supplier invoice payments (a market estimated at €165 billion by 2025⁴). Each new sector opens up a new attack surface for fraudsters.

The prevention market is organizing itself

Faced with this threat, the BNPL fraud prevention market is projected to reach €4.5 billion by 2025 (+24.1% growth⁵). Players are investing heavily in artificial intelligence and behavioral analysis.

How can we better protect ourselves?

Detecting synthetic identities
Cross-referencing multiple data sources to identify inconsistencies
Analyze solvency in depth
Do not be satisfied with a quick and declarative check.
Use Open Banking
Accessing real banking data to detect risky behavior
Monitor payment defaults
Identify patterns of first payment followed by default

Meelo analyzes 300+ banks in real time

Through Open Banking, Meelo detects high-risk BNPL profiles and synthetic identities before approval.
Contact us →

or by telephone: 03 20 83 12 56

Sources

¹Research and Markets, Feb. 2025; Mordor Intelligence, June 2025
² Merchant Risk Council (MRC), Dec. 2024
³ Chargeflow, Sep. 2025
⁴ Floa Pay, April 2025
⁵ Globe Newswire, Sep. 2025