Online Payments Trends according to Consumer Spend Data

Fable’s consumer spend data provides a granular view on customer spending patterns, including online spend trends and the payments processors most used. Given the surge in recent years of Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) services, Fable Data has analysed its pan-European consumer transaction dataset to investigate the online payments landscape.

UK’s preference for PayPal in decline with Klarna on the up

PayPal’s UK dominance among online payment processors has waned over 2025. While it is still the leading player, Shopify benefits from a clear Christmas-season boost and the Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) provider, Klarna, has steadily grown its presence over the year.

UK’s BNPL habits remain consistent:

Focusing on BNPL, across 2025 we see UK consumers placing a consistent portion of their online spend with BNPL providers.

Klarna is the dominant BNPL player in the UK. Relative to Clearpay (the next largest provider), spend placed with Klarna is consistently 2.5 to 3 times larger.

Looking at monthly BNPL spending patterns, we can see clear seasonal trends in the UK with peaks around the Christmas season.

However, after adjusting for seasonality, we see high year-on-year growth rates for all months excluding November and December. This suggests that despite the seasonal Nov-Dec trends, there is a notable shift towards BNPL being used more for day-to-day purchases across rest of the year.

Klarna and Scalapay dominate in Italy and France

The BNPL landscape can vary across countries. Leveraging our pan-European data, we can see that Scalapay is a significant player in Italy and France.

Get in touch if you’d like to see the full analysis or understand more about our Pan European Consumer Transaction datasets covering the 5 major European economies.