The results show how successfully Monzo has been able to offer its "Flex" BNPL product to current consumers. This product enables any Monzo customer to spread the cost of any payment, regardless of whether the merchant supports BNPL or not. The findings are included in a new research by credit technology company Render.

Despite being a type of debt, BNPL transactions do not frequently show up on credit histories, according to the Render Report. More than half (51%) of the more than 7,500 clients whose anonymized data was examined between 2022 and 2023 and who were known to use BNPL did not have it shown on their credit reports.

Furthermore, the Render Report discovered that among BNPL clients in the population under study, the average transaction count has increased across all age categories. This finding implies that BNPL is being utilized to finance more modest purchases as opposed to expensive single-ticket goods. This implies that BNPL is being used more frequently for regular expenses.

Anonymized Open Banking data of those who granted permission to share their information when applying for a loan through Render's sister company, the B2C lender Abound, was surveyed in order to create the Render Report.

The remainder of the report's findings also include:

• While high street and supermarket expenditure rebounded in 2023 (thanks to a rise in purchases at bargain retailers like Poundland, Aldi, and Lidl), the pandemic era's spike in online spending reversed, with average online spending per person falling 3% that year compared to 2022.

• Throughout 2023, the great majority of people (62%) continued to withdraw cash each month. In spite of the growing acceptance of contactless payments, only 3 percent of respondents said they had not used a cash machine in the preceding year.

Why Movie ticket sales climbed by over a third (29%) in 2023, while subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime increased by 9% during the same year.

Render and Abound's CEO and co-founder, Gerald Chappell, stated:

"Open Banking reveals information about BNPL usage and even the prevalence of problem gambling that is not discovered in standard credit checks.

The majority of credit reports examined did not have any BNPL transactions, which is particularly noteworthy because it implies that lenders who do not use Open Banking data are speculating about whether or not their clients' debt levels are accurate, which could result in debt accumulation.

"By disseminating these observations, we hope to spark a discussion about the direction responsible lending should take going forward."