Deferred Payment Accounts

Deferred Payments are available in credit reports from 1 February 2022.

Often referred to as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) these are credit agreements made at a Point of Sale.
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For example when checking out on a website (or a physical till) there may be an option to split the purchase into three payments or delay the payment for a month.

In most cases there are no charges for this type of credit, i.e. it is interest-free credit.

However, as the sector becomes increasingly regulated more providers are charging interest for the purchase. The interest rate must be converted to an Annual Percentage Rate and is likely to fall in the hundreds of percent.

For the purposes of credit reporting they are known as Deferred Payment (DP) accounts. Often the amount of credit provided will equal the payment due:

In this example the applicant has made a number of purchases in the run up to Christmas. In this case the balance is equal to the regular payment.

This means that it is a single payment deferred credit agreement. In other words the full balance will be paid the following month.

If the Deferred Payment account is to be spread over, for example, three months then the regular payment will be less than the current balance.

Currently there is no impact on credit score for taking our a Deferred Payment account. However this is only a temporary measure whilst the Credit Reference Agencies calculate how using Deferred Payment impacts on credit risk.

The reporting of Deferred Payment accounts is evolving. We'll have more examples of cases as they appear on credit reports. We'll let users know when these accounts begin to have an impact on credit score.