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Affirm Survey: 79% of UK SMEs Face Checkout Pressure as BNPL Rules Land

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Affirm Survey: 79% of UK SMEs Face Checkout Pressure as BNPL Rules Land

The research, conducted by Censuswide among 500 UK SME owners and senior decision-makers in late June and early July 2026, was published on 12 August to coincide with new Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) rules coming into force in the UK. The findings are positioned by Affirm as evidence that regulatory change creates a commercial opening for compliant flexible payment products aimed at the SME segment.

The survey data points to a gap between SME ambition and SME capability. Some 88% of respondents said offering flexible payment options such as BNPL would drive business growth, and 85% said such options had a positive impact on customer experience. SMEs also reported specific commercial outcomes from offering flexible payments: 85% cited improved conversion rates, 84% improved average order value, and 85% increased repeat purchases. Whether these figures reflect current users of flexible payment products or are aspirational responses from non-users is not clarified in the release, a distinction that matters when weighing the strength of the causal claim.

Cost and complexity remain the primary barriers. More than half of respondents (51%) said they were concerned about the cost of regulation and compliance. That concern is timely: the new UK BNPL regulatory framework, which brings consumer credit rules to previously unregulated deferred-payment products, adds due-diligence and disclosure requirements that smaller merchants must now navigate, often without the in-house compliance resource that larger retailers carry.

Ruth Spratt , UK country manager at Affirm, said: “Small businesses are being asked to meet the same customer expectations as the biggest retailers, often with far fewer resources.


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