There was a time in the not-so-distant-past when credit cards were a genuine novelty for American consumers.
First emerging in the late 1950s, credit cards spread through households like wildfire during the 70s and 80s, fueling the rapid development of card technology and thus enabling them to become ubiquitous personal finance vehicles they are today. In a matter of decades, private credit has become the bedrock of the post-industrial US economy, contributing nearly $900 billion to the country’s GDP and providing six million jobs over the past three years alone.
Now in 2026, those omnipresent slabs of plastic are just the tip of the iceberg. The financial industry has options available to every strata of consumer, from predatory payday loans for poor and working-class people to crypto-backed loans for upwardly mobile yuppies. And then there’s the “buy-now, pay-later” loan, those credit card-free vehicles which up until now were reserved for small, one-time consumer purchases like furniture — or meal delivery.
According to a recent survey by the loan marketplace LendingTree, however, BNPL-style lending from apps like Klarna and Afterpay are increasingly becoming the go-to for struggling households to pay for basic needs. Flagged by the New York Times, the survey found that half of those using BNPL loans said they’d have no way of making ends meet otherwise.
