Buy Now, Pay Later Plans For In-Game Items Are Coming, Whether You Like It or Not

By Wallace Truesdale | July 10, 2025 | 2:41pm

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Video Games News things that shouldn't happen

Buy Now, Pay Later Plans For In-Game Items Are Coming, Whether You Like It or Not

On June 26 2025, buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider Affirm announced a partnership with gaming commerce company Xsolla. It will allow Affirm to bring BNPL plans to games that use Xsolla’s payment tools in the U.S, with plans to expand to Canada and the U.K.

As the announcement reads, Xsolla manages checkouts for thousands of game developers, and their games will “automatically” give players the choice to “split purchases into interest-free biweekly payments or longer-term monthly installments for carts starting at $50.” Xsolla’s President of Communication & Strategy Chris Hewish claims this will empower developers “to offer gamers a smarter way to pay for the content they love while driving deeper engagement and long-term growth.” While Xsolla and Affirm don’t specify which games this affects, if you need an idea of the potential scope, their partner success stories include work with major publishers like Dying Light publisher Techland, PUBG publisher Krafton, and Fortnite developer Epic Games.

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What this announcement also fails to mention is the amount of baggage that comes with BNPL plans for its users. Despite claims that it allows consumers to be more flexible and smarter with their purchases, a statement mostly heard from those selling BNPL services, it is a practice frequently not improving a borrower’s finances. Affirm avoids being as predatory as some companies by not charging fees (don’t worry, it still charges interest for monthly purchases), but this small concession does not change the fundamental issue around this payment model.

BNPL plans offer the appearance of affordability, but in actuality do little to better users’ overall financial situation. This was supported by findings from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in January 2025, where the agency reported that BNPL borrowers tended to have multiple simultaneous loans, that most loans went to borrowers with lower credit scores, and that BNPL borrowers were more likely to have higher balances on other credit accounts like credit cards and personal loans. The whole report paints a disturbing picture: a rapidly expanding sector where businesses capitalize on consumers’ monetary struggles by offering short-term relief that potentially ends with more stress to manage.

While excitement to play new game content or access in-game items is understandable, video games are largely a luxury product. Considering that BNPL plans are already being used by many for necessities like groceries, one can’t help but question their existence for, much less in, video games. Excluding those whose livelihoods are deeply intertwined with covering the hot new thing in games, which itself can be a less than ideal relationship given the precarious state of games media and its current ability to employ people at scale, the urgency baked into “buy now” seems more interested in profit than assistance.

Strategies that target financially vulnerable consumers to spend their money now rather than save it for later, in a tumultuous economic environment, deserve heavy scrutiny. They especially deserve extra attention when entering a market that, between the rise of esports betting that major publishers are trying to cash in on to the impact of monetized gacha games, is filling with ways to keep draining a wallet.