Buy now, pay later lending in the UK stopped being a regulatory gray area on July 15, 2026. The Financial Conduct Authority's new rules bring deferred payment credit, the formal term for interest-free BNPL, under full oversight for the first time, six years after the product went mainstream with no consumer credit license required (FCA, 2026). The same week, further east, India and Nepal turned on a real-time link between their national payment networks, letting citizens of both countries send money across the border with a phone number instead of a bank account (Business Standard, 2026).
Neither story is really about a single company. Both are about regulators and payment operators formalizing infrastructure that grew faster than the rules meant to govern it.
BNPL borrowers get a credit file, and a complaints route
UK shoppers used BNPL to spend more than £13 billion in 2024, up from £60 million in 2017, according to figures the FCA cited in its July announcement (FCA, 2026). The Authority's own Financial Lives Survey found 10.9 million UK adults used BNPL in the twelve months to May 2024, up from 8.8 million the year before. For most of that growth, providers operated outside the Consumer Credit Act because BNPL agreements were structured to be interest-free and repaid in a small number of installments, a carve-out that had applied since the 1970s and was never designed with instant checkout lending in mind.
That carve-out ended on July 15. Lenders offering deferred payment credit must now run affordability checks before extending it, disclose repayment dates and amounts clearly at checkout, and give borrowers in financial difficulty a path to free debt advice rather than continued collections (GOV.UK, 2026). Consumers also gained access to the Financial Ombudsman Service for BNPL complaints for the first time, and the product now falls under the Consumer Duty, the FCA's broader standard for treating customers fairly (FCA, 2026).
The transition was not instant. Firms could register for a temporary permissions regime between May 15 and July 1, 2026, which let them keep trading past Regulation Day while they prepared a full authorization application. They now have six months from July 15 to complete that application, meaning the UK BNPL sector will not have a fully licensed lender population until early 2027 (FCA, "PS26/1: Regulation of Deferred Payment Credit," 2026). Firms that missed the registration window and continue lending without a license are committing a criminal offense under the new perimeter.
India and Nepal turn on a phone-number-only remittance corridor
On June 9, 2026, NPCI International Payments Limited, the overseas arm of India's National Payments Corporation, and Nepal Clearing House Limited switched on a direct link between India's Unified Payments Interface and Nepal's National Payments Interface (NCHL, 2026). The link lets a person in either country send money using only the recipient's mobile number or UPI ID, without entering bank account or routing details (Business Standard, 2026).
The service launched with a limited set of banks on each side. In Nepal, that includes Everest Bank, Global IME Bank, Machhapuchchhre Bank, Nabil Bank and Nepal SBI Bank; in India, eighteen banks including State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Punjab National Bank are live, with both operators saying more banks will be added (NCHL, 2026). The corridor is peer-to-peer for now, aimed at remittances from Nepali workers in India and at cross-border travel spending, not merchant checkout.
Nepal is one of the largest recipients of remittances from India relative to its economy, and most of that flow has historically moved through cash agents or bank wire transfers that take a day or more to settle and carry a fixed fee regardless of transfer size. A UPI-rail transfer settles in real time and at UPI's typical low-cost structure, which is why NPCI International has been building similar links elsewhere, including earlier UPI acceptance arrangements with Singapore, the UAE and Sri Lanka. The Nepal link is narrower than those, since it connects two full national payment switches directly rather than only enabling UPI acceptance at foreign merchants.
What to watch next
The UK's six-month authorization clock runs to mid-January 2027. That window will show which BNPL providers can meet the FCA's affordability and disclosure bar and which quietly stop lending in the UK rather than build the compliance infrastructure the new rules require. The FCA has said it will publish updates on firms' authorization status as applications are decided.
On the India-Nepal corridor, both NPCI International and Nepal Clearing House have said additional banks will be onboarded in the coming months. Whether the link expands to merchant payments, following the pattern of India's earlier UPI arrangements with Singapore and the UAE, is the next concrete signal to watch for, and neither operator has given a date for that.