{
  "meta": {
    "slug": "phantom-debt",
    "name": "Buy Now Pay Later Lending Volume",
    "branded_name": "Phantom Debt",
    "description": null,
    "source": "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Buy Now, Pay Later Market Report",
    "source_credit": null,
    "source_url": "https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/the-buy-now-pay-later-market/",
    "frequency": "annual",
    "units": "billions_usd",
    "fred_series_id": null,
    "fred_edge_series_id": null,
    "bls_series_id": null,
    "series_id": null,
    "measurement_basis": "How much money six large buy now, pay later lenders — Affirm, Cash App Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, Sezzle and Zip — lent out over a calendar year, in that year's own dollars, as reported by the CFPB for 2019 through 2023. It counts pay-in-four loans only: point-of-sale installment loans and credit card installment plans are not in it. It is a flow, the lending done during the year, not a balance anyone owes at a moment in time. The CFPB puts these six firms at roughly forty percent of the overall point-of-sale financing market in 2023 and says its sample is not necessarily representative of the whole buy now, pay later market, so this is a large slice of the market and not the market.",
    "door": 3,
    "trend": "rising",
    "trend_suppressed": null,
    "series_breaks": [],
    "direction": "bidirectional",
    "last_updated": "2026-09-17T00:00:00Z",
    "stale": false,
    "stale_reason": null,
    "data_status": "historical",
    "page_url": "https://americandefault.org/indicators/phantom-debt/",
    "attribution": "American Default (americandefault.org) — Our analysis is free to use with attribution to American Default Research. Source data stays under each publisher's terms; cite the source named here."
  },
  "current": null,
  "last_verified": {
    "value": 43.9,
    "date": "2023-12-31"
  },
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2019-12-31",
      "value": 2.2
    },
    {
      "date": "2020-12-31",
      "value": 8.9
    },
    {
      "date": "2021-12-31",
      "value": 25.5
    },
    {
      "date": "2022-12-31",
      "value": 33.4
    },
    {
      "date": "2023-12-31",
      "value": 43.9
    }
  ]
}