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A $400 purchase is still a $400 purchase. But when that purchase is broken into four $100 payments through a buy now, pay later service, people view it differently. So do their spouses, according to new research.

�ճ����, which is under peer review at the��Journal of Retailing, found that married consumers viewed purchases as more justifiable and less likely to trigger disagreements when they used buy now, pay later, or BNPL, a popular installment payment option often offered at online checkout through services such as Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm.

Mahdiyeh Amozegar

"We found two reasons for this effect,” said��Mahdiyeh Amozegar, a marketing PhD student at the��Leeds School of Business and the study's lead author. “First, spouses may perceive a purchase as costing less when they can spread the payments out over time. Second, they may feel they have enough room in their budget to cover the payments without sacrificing other expenses.”��

Why four payments feel different from one

The researchers, including��John Lynch, professor of marketing, and��Alix Barasch, associate professor of marketing at Leeds,��tested the effect from both sides of a marriage. One experiment asked nearly 500 married consumers to imagine buying personal “splurge” items priced between $100 and $400 using either BNPL or a credit card. Another flipped the perspective, asking spouses to evaluate purchases their partners wanted to make.

The results were similar from both sides of the purchase. Buyers expected their spouses to see BNPL purchases as less costly, easier to justify and less likely to cause conflict than the same purchases made with a credit card.��

“What surprised us was that even the spouse who didn’t make the purchase saw it the same way,” Amozegar said. “It wasn’t just the buyer convincing themselves that the purchase was more affordable. Their spouse also saw it as less costly and easier to justify.”

Is this purchase worth the argument?

For many married consumers, buying something for yourself comes with another calculation: How am I going to explain this purchase to my spouse?

Before running the experiments, the researchers surveyed 134 married adults and found that 70% thought about whether their purchases could be justified to a spouse. Sixty percent said they had considered a past or future purchase that seemed justifiable to them but difficult to justify to their partner.

That helps explain why the way a purchase is paid for can matter. Among the survey participants reporting�� moderate to extensive BNPL use, 52% said reducing conflict with a spouse had motivated them to use BNPL, while 58% said they had used it to make purchases easier to justify.

"When you're in a relationship, your spending affects both of you. Money you spend on one thing is money you can't use for something else you might both need or want," Amozegar said.

Beyond overspending

Consumer advocates have long worried that buy now, pay later services encourage people to spend more than they otherwise would. Amozegar acknowledges that previous research has repeatedly found links between BNPL and increased spending.

But most previous research on payment methods has focused on individual consumers. This study examines how payment methods influence not just individual consumers, but also how spouses judge and justify purchases.

“Even in a happy marriage, someone can feel financially limited, and buy now, pay later can make a wished-for purchase feel more justifiable,” Amozegar said. “Used honestly, that can open up real conversations about shared money, with couples making sure together that the installments fit rather than shutting those conversations down.”