Educational, not advice. This article explains what changed when Buy Now Pay Later came under Financial Conduct Authority regulation. It is general information, not personal financial advice, and it is not a recommendation to use or avoid these products. Savvy Investor Guide is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
What this article covers: what the rules that took effect on 15 July 2026 actually require, which protections a shopper genuinely gained, the date rule that decides whether you have them, and three points where the pre-launch coverage, including our own, needs correcting.
What it does not cover: whether to use Buy Now Pay Later, which provider to choose, or any individual firm’s authorisation status.
In short
- Section 75 protection now applies to Buy Now Pay Later purchases over £100 and up to £30,000, the same as a credit card. Before 15 July this was hedged; it is now confirmed.
- The date that matters is when you took the agreement out, not when you complain. Agreements from before 15 July 2026 stay unregulated, with no Ombudsman access.
- Credit file reporting did NOT become mandatory. A lot of coverage said it did. It remains voluntary, with a rule flagged as a probable future measure under a separate piece of work.
- Affordability checks are now required on every transaction, including ones of £50 or less, though the depth of check is proportionate.
- It does not cover instalment credit from the retailer itself. The rules bite when the lender and the seller are different businesses.
- Firms operating under temporary permissions must follow the same consumer rules from day one. Your protections do not depend on which category your provider is in.
- The FCA has published nothing since Regulation Day. There is no post-implementation data yet.
Buy Now Pay Later came under FCA regulation on 15 July 2026. We wrote about it beforehand, as did everyone else, and a month on some of that pre-launch coverage needs correcting, including ours.
Here is what the rules actually do.
What is actually regulated
The regulated thing has a name, and it is not “BNPL”. It is Deferred Payment Credit, and the FCA defines it precisely:
DPC refers to an interest-free credit product, repayable in 12 or fewer instalments in 12 months or less and which is currently exempt from regulation.
FCA, PS26/1
The rules come from FCA Policy Statement PS26/1, published 11 February 2026, sitting on top of a statutory instrument made in July 2025 that set the commencement date twelve months later. The FCA calls 15 July 2026 Regulation Day.
Correction one: Section 75 applies, and it is not complicated
Before the rules landed, the honest position was hedged. It was not clear whether shoppers would get full Section 75 protection or something adjacent to it.
They get the real thing. The FCA’s own consumer page says so plainly: if something goes wrong with what you bought, you may be able to get a refund from the lender under “Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act”, and it describes this as “the same as credit card purchases.”
The mechanics matter here, because they explain why nobody could say for certain beforehand. The statutory instrument that regulates Deferred Payment Credit switches off a specific, named list of Consumer Credit Act sections and replaces them with FCA rules. That list runs to ten sections covering disclosure, form, signing and enforcement.
Section 75 is not on the list. So once these agreements became regulated credit agreements, Section 75 applied to them by operation of ordinary law, on the usual terms: purchases costing more than £100 and not more than £30,000.
In practice that means if the retailer goes bust, the goods never arrive, or what turns up is not what was described, the BNPL lender is jointly liable with the seller. That is a serious protection, and the biggest single thing that changed.
Correction two: the date rule almost nobody explained
Most coverage said the rules apply “from 15 July 2026”. True, but it leaves out the part that decides whether they apply to you.
The test is when the agreement was entered into, not when the problem arose or when you complain. On Ombudsman access, PS26/1 is explicit:
The Financial Ombudsman’s CJ [Compulsory Jurisdiction] will only cover complaints about regulated DPC agreements entered into on or after Regulation Day
FCA, PS26/1, paragraph 4.13
And agreements from before that date do not become regulated later: “Any firm will continue to be able to service DPC agreements taken out before Regulation Day, as these agreements will remain unregulated”.
So a purchase made on 14 July 2026 carries none of this. No Ombudsman route, and the agreement sits outside the regulated regime for its whole life. A purchase made on 16 July, from the same provider, for the same item, carries all of it.
The FCA also confirmed it will not extend the Ombudsman’s voluntary jurisdiction to cover older agreements, so there is no side door.
Correction three: credit files did not change
This one was widely reported and is simply not what happened.
PS26/1 imposes no mandatory credit reference agency reporting rule. What it says is that firms are “likely to be required to report their DPC lending to CRAs as part of the remedies of the Credit Information Market Study”. That is a different FCA workstream, and a future one.
What exists today is voluntary and partial. Many providers already report to some agencies under reciprocal arrangements that let them access credit data in the first place, and where they do, this lending appears as its own account type rather than being folded in with something else. But that was true before 15 July, and it remains a commercial choice rather than a requirement.
If you have read that your BNPL use now automatically shows on your credit file, that is not what the rules did.
What genuinely is new
Affordability checks, on everything. Lenders “will need to undertake a creditworthiness assessment for each DPC transaction”, and the FCA confirmed this reaches even very small agreements, specifically “small-sum DPC agreements of £50 or less”.
The depth is proportionate rather than uniform: “Where it is obvious in the circumstances of a particular case that there is no material affordability risk, a firm need not assess income and expenditure”. So a £30 purchase is not going to trigger a mortgage-style review. HM Treasury put the intent more bluntly: firms “must now carry out affordability checks before offering credit, ensuring no one borrows what they cannot realistically repay.”
Information before you commit. Lenders must tell you the amount borrowed, when repayments are due, how much they will be, and what any late fee will be, before the purchase rather than after.
Rules about what happens when you miss one. Firms must contact you “as soon as possible” after a missed payment, spell out the sums outstanding including late fees and “any immediate or future adverse consequences”, give reasonable notice before terminating or enforcing, and signpost to free debt advice before taking collection action.
Does it matter which provider you used?
A reasonable worry, because not every firm was fully authorised on day one. Many are operating under a Temporary Permissions Regime while their full application is processed. They have a six month window from Regulation Day to apply, and they lose the permission if they do not.
For a shopper, this does not create two tiers of protection. The FCA is clear that firms in the temporary regime “will need to comply with our rules from Regulation Day”. Affordability checks, disclosure, arrears handling, Ombudsman access and Section 75 all apply the same way.
The real differences are regulator-facing rather than customer-facing: the Senior Managers regime does not apply to temporary-permission firms that are not authorised for anything else, and their complaints reporting to the FCA is suspended until they are fully authorised.
If you want to check a specific provider’s status, the FCA’s Financial Services Register is the place, and it is the only reliable one.
What is still outside the rules
The boundary is not a list of products. It is a test of who is lending.
Deferred Payment Credit is regulated when the lender and the seller are different businesses. Where a retailer offers its own instalment plan on its own goods, that stays exempt, and the FCA confirmed that merchants brokering these agreements “will remain exempt from regulation”.
That is a real gap. Two checkouts can look identical to a shopper, offer the same three payments, and carry completely different rights, depending on a corporate structure that is invisible at the point of sale.
One thing to be careful about: charge cards are not named as an excluded product anywhere in the rules. The exclusion follows from the definition (interest-free, twelve or fewer instalments, twelve months or less, a third-party lender) rather than from a list of products that are out.
What we still do not know
A month in, there is no evidence yet. Better to say so plainly than to fill the gap with inference.
The FCA has published no post-implementation statement, speech or data since Regulation Day. The regulator quotes circulating in launch-day coverage came from a speech given on 25 June, before the rules took effect, recycled by trade press on the day. No complaints figures, arrears data or usage numbers covering the period after 15 July have been published.
So the central question, whether affordability checks have actually shut a significant number of people out of a product they were relying on, cannot be answered yet. Predictions were made before the rules landed. None of them has been tested against data.
That is not for want of looking. As at 15 August, the FCA’s own Buy Now Pay Later page still carried a last-updated date of 15 July, Regulation Day itself. The Financial Ombudsman Service has published a single item tagged Buy Now Pay Later, dated 8 July, a week before the rules took effect. And the Ombudsman’s most recent complaints figures, released on 22 July, cover April to June, a quarter that closed before the jurisdiction opened, so they could not have carried this lending even if it had produced complaints on day one. The first quarterly figures capable of showing anything at all run from July to September, and they are not due until the autumn.
FAQ
Do I get Section 75 protection on Buy Now Pay Later now?
On agreements entered into from 15 July 2026, yes, for purchases costing more than £100 and not more than £30,000. The FCA describes it as the same as credit card purchases. It works because the legislation regulating these agreements disapplies a named list of Consumer Credit Act sections and Section 75 is not among them.
I took out a BNPL agreement in June. Am I covered?
No. Agreements entered into before 15 July 2026 remain unregulated for their whole life. The Ombudsman’s compulsory jurisdiction covers only agreements entered into on or after that date, and the FCA has confirmed it will not extend the voluntary jurisdiction to older ones.
Does my BNPL use now show on my credit file?
Not as a result of these rules. Mandatory reporting to credit reference agencies was not introduced on Regulation Day. The FCA has said firms are likely to be required to report as part of a separate piece of work, but that has not happened yet. Some providers already report voluntarily, as they did before.
Will I be refused for small purchases now?
Lenders must carry out a creditworthiness assessment on every transaction, including those of £50 or less, but the assessment is proportionate. The FCA has said that where it is obvious there is no material affordability risk, a firm need not assess income and expenditure.
Does it matter whether my provider is fully authorised?
Not for your protections. Firms operating under temporary permissions have to comply with the same consumer rules from Regulation Day. The differences are administrative and regulator-facing. You can check any firm’s status on the FCA’s Financial Services Register.
Is every instalment offer at checkout now regulated?
No. The rules apply when the lender and the seller are different businesses. A retailer offering its own instalment plan on its own goods remains exempt, and merchants brokering these agreements stay outside regulation. Two checkouts can look the same and carry different rights.
Has the FCA said how it is going?
Not yet. As at 15 August 2026, the FCA had published no post-implementation statement or data, and its Buy Now Pay Later page still carried a last-updated date of 15 July. The regulator quotes that appeared in launch coverage were from a speech given before the rules took effect. The Ombudsman’s first complaints figures capable of covering this lending run from July to September and are not due until the autumn.
Information, not advice. This article describes the Deferred Payment Credit rules that took effect on 15 July 2026, as understood at the time of writing. It is general information and not a personal recommendation about using credit. Savvy Investor Guide is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. If you are struggling with debt, MoneyHelper and StepChange offer free impartial help.
Key sources
- FCA, PS26/1: Regulation of Deferred Payment Credit, published 11 February 2026, the source of the rules and of the Ombudsman and credit-reporting positions quoted here.
- FCA, Buy Now Pay Later consumer guidance, for the Section 75 position and the pre-purchase disclosure requirements.
- FCA press release, New protections confirmed for Buy Now Pay Later borrowers.
- The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025, which sets Regulation Day and lists the Consumer Credit Act sections that are disapplied.
- The No. 2 Order 2025, covering domestic premises suppliers and transitional permissions.
- FCA Financial Services Register, to check any individual provider’s authorisation status.