By Imlisanen Jamir
In India, credit is being sold as convenience. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services arrived promising freedom from banks and paperwork. Pay in three clicks, settle the bill later. What began as a way to split the cost of a dress or a phone case has turned into a system where food and fuel are put on credit tabs. A 2024 LendingTree survey reported that about one in four BNPL users now use it for groceries.
The numbers are not small. The Indian BNPL market was valued at USD 15.4 billion in 2024 (IMARC Group). Market researchers project it could rise to nearly USD 45 billion by 2033, an annual growth of over 11 percent. Another study by Mordor Intelligence estimates an even sharper curve: USD 30.9 billion in 2025 to USD 78.5 billion by 2030.
Yet the sector is already changing. The Reserve Bank of India in 2022 barred non-bank apps from offering credit lines through prepaid instruments, cutting off the easiest BNPL route. Since then, fintech firms have been forced to rework their products. By 2024, several major players—including PayU and Paytm—were pivoting from BNPL toward bank-linked EMI products. What was marketed as liberation from traditional debt is becoming debt of the most traditional kind.
For Indian consumers, especially the young, the shift matters little. The habit of buying on borrowed money is set. Credit card penetration in India remains around 5 percent of the population (World Bank, RBI). That gap is being filled by digital wallets, QR-based payments, and app-linked credit lines. Paytm Postpaid, Amazon Pay Later, LazyPay, and Simpl are not only familiar names but embedded in e-commerce checkouts. During sale seasons, EMI options are advertised as prominently as discounts.
In Nagaland, the conditions for this shift exist. Smartphone penetration is high: by 2023, over 90 percent of Indian households had a mobile phone (NSSO data), and Nagaland has one of the highest tele-density rates in the North East, according to TRAI. Formal credit access, however, remains low; RBI data shows the state has one of the smallest absolute numbers of active credit cards in the country. E-commerce reliance is visible: Amazon and Flipkart festival sales are among the main retail channels for consumer goods, a fact confirmed by the surge in logistics hubs around Dimapur. The result is a consumer base with digital access to credit but without the financial buffers found in more industrialised states.
Debt is not new, but the language around it is. The fintech promise is that these are not loans but “tools of empowerment.” The truth is simpler: they are loans. Late fees accumulate. Defaults are reported to credit bureaus. In 2025, FICO announced it would begin factoring BNPL loans into its credit scores, and Affirm in the United States started reporting its “Pay-in-4” loans to Experian. The same direction of travel is likely in India.
The irony is that this “financial inclusion” comes without parallel inclusion in jobs or income. In 2024, the Lotha Students’ Union reported that more than a thousand educated youth in its community—including hundreds of postgraduates and doctorates—remained unemployed. State-wide graduate unemployment rates are among the highest in India. Against that backdrop, credit systems designed to increase consumption are not solutions but traps.
The rise of BNPL and its rebranding into EMI is not an abstract policy debate. It is the financialisation of daily life. Groceries, fuel, medicine, shoes—all on credit. For those with steady salaries, it is a matter of managing cash flow. For those without, it is debt dressed up as access.
The hard fact is this: when a society begins putting necessities on installments, the problem is not payment flexibility but income insecurity. Regulators may tighten rules, fintechs may pivot, but the core remains. People are living on borrowed time and borrowed money.
Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com
