BUY NOW, PAY LATER (BNPL): FINTECH INNOVATION ORCONSUMER DEBT TRAP

In India, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is becoming one of the quickest-expanding fintech innovations, and this trend is fueled by an exponential growth in the number of people buying things and accessing services online and via their cell phones, increased internet connectivity, digital payment systems development. Buy Now Pay Later, allows customer to instantly purchase goods and services, to pay over the coming installment without short-term interest. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept, growth, merits and demerits, impact of consumers behavior, and regulations of Buy Now Pay Later with in Indian digital ecosystem. This research study evaluates the transformation and revolution of consumer credits by fintech firms and digital lending plat forms, it is about making lending and borrowing easier, convenient and easily embedded within online shopping platforms. The paper is descriptive and qualitative in analysis and depends on secondary data sources obtained from various reports released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the World Bank, some research reports by fintech firms and articles by sites such as the Economic Times, Business Standard, Mint and Reuters. The research concludes that the Buy Now Pay Later schemes are facilitating more access to credit and more ease in payment and enabling rapid growth of the digital economy, but it has several serious implications concerning over consumption, impulse purchasing behavior and consumer indebtedness as well as a lack of financial awareness among the customers. In essence, BNPL schemes are beneficial and effective financial tools only when utilized properly; however, they need more strong regulations, more financial awareness, and greater consumer protection.