U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is leading an effort to seek more clarity from credit reporting agencies on how they are approaching buy now, pay later (BNPL) products.
Warren along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) sent letters to Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion on how they are incorporating BNPL products into consumers’ credit reports.
“The current infrastructure of credit reporting in the United States is extremely opaque; the credit reporting industry has been very secretive about its scoring models, which presents major, potential consumer protection issues. With the rise of data harvesting, credit reporting companies hold more information about consumers than ever before. Moreover, credit reporting companies are also now performing the functions of data harvesters themselves,” wrote the senators in the letter.
This letter follows letters the senators sent to BNPL companies last fall seeking information.
“In November 2025, we requested information from seven BNPL providers about their practices, including if they reported BNPL loans to major credit bureaus. With one notable exception, most BNPL providers do not automatically provide data to credit reporting agencies,” wrote the senators. “Companies’ concerns included that credit reporting agencies may: interpret BNPL loans in a manner that is harmful to their customers, including adding ‘unnecessary’ tradelines to a consumers’ credit report; be unable to handle complexities when consumers make returns; lower their customer’s credit scores based on their interpretation of the BNPL data; and broader concerns about the manner and types of data that are used to determine a credit score.”
The senators outlined a series of questions for the credit reporting agencies seeking to better understand how they treat BNPL loans. They seek answers to those questions by May 18.