Holiday shoppers are planning to spend more this year — and a record share of it will go on buy now, pay later plans, even as surveys show money is tighter than last year.
US holiday retail sales are forecast to reach $1.013 trillion in November and December 2026, up 4.2% from $972 billion in 2025, according to the National Retail Federation’s forecast released October 15 — the first holiday season to pass the trillion-dollar mark. Deloitte’s 2026 Holiday Retail Survey of 4,000 US consumers puts the average planned household spend at $1,654, up 4% from $1,595 last year. And 56% of holiday shoppers told the NRF’s survey of 8,094 adults that economic conditions will affect their plans.
Related: US Gas Falls Below $4 a Gallon for First Time Since July · What CPI Means for Your Wallet: Savings Rates Hit 4.35% in November
BNPL hits a record $21.3 billion
Buy now, pay later is headed for a record holiday. Adobe Digital Insights forecasts shoppers will charge $21.3 billion to BNPL plans this November and December, up 6.6% from last year, according to DebtDiscipline’s summary of the Adobe forecast. That is roughly 8% of the $275.1 billion in total online holiday spending Adobe expects.
Black Friday itself is forecast to bring $807 million in BNPL spending, up 8% from last year, and Cyber Monday $1.09 billion, up 5.3%. Overall, Adobe expects $12.9 billion in online sales on Black Friday (November 27), up 9.2%, and $15.1 billion on Cyber Monday (November 30), up 6.2%.
Shoppers are leaning on instalments because they have to. Sezzle and Morning Consult found 66% of shoppers would likely abandon a purchase if their preferred BNPL option was not available at checkout, in a survey of 2,090 US adults conducted July 29 to August 5, 2026. And 44% of consumers feel more financially stressed than a year ago, compared with 27% in 2025, according to the ETA-TSG study cited by For You.
The warning in the numbers
The risk is that instalments become debt. A LendingTree survey from March 2026 found 47% of BNPL users had paid late on at least one loan in the past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024, and 54% regretted a BNPL purchase. A NerdWallet survey found 38% of holiday shoppers planning to use BNPL expect they will not be able to make their payments in full and on time.
The smart way to use BNPL this Black Friday is to treat it like cash: one plan at a time, payments set to autopay, and nothing bought on instalments that you could not afford outright. The deals are real — but so are the late fees, and the January bill is the part of Black Friday nobody photographs.
Sources: National Retail Federation holiday forecast (15 Oct 2026) via Walnut Invest and The Global Statistics; Deloitte 2026 Holiday Retail Survey (15 Oct 2026); Adobe Digital Insights holiday forecast via DebtDiscipline (3 Nov 2026) and For You (Nov 2026); Sezzle/Morning Consult survey (29 Sep 2026); LendingTree BNPL Tracker (Mar 2026) via Not Ordinary Blogger (31 Oct 2026). Survey figures are self-reported and vary by sample.
