Abstract

Artificial intelligence-integrated ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) platforms are diffusing rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), raising concerns about consumer financial vulnerability. Drawing on choice architecture, payment decoupling, and financial literacy literatures, this study examines how three platform-level features—algorithmic nudging, AI personalization intensity, and perceived ease of credit—are associated with impulsive buying tendency and downstream financial outcomes, and whether BNPL-specific financial literacy attenuates these associations. A multi-method design combined cross-sectional partial least squares structural equation modeling (N = 1247 active BNPL users in seven MENA countries) with a six-month longitudinal follow-up (N = 847, 68% retention). Algorithmic nudging was positively associated with impulsive buying tendency, which in turn was associated with elevated financial stress and longitudinal debt accumulation. The ‘loyalty trap’—a paradoxical state in which financially stressed consumers maintain high platform loyalty—is provisionally documented via piecewise longitudinal trajectories. We emphasize that this pattern is consistent with but not causally established by the present design, and we outline specific experimental and quasi-experimental research designs needed for causal identification. BNPL-specific financial literacy moderated the associations between algorithmic nudging, impulsive buying, and adverse financial outcomes, with the highest-literacy quartile exhibiting substantially attenuated debt trajectories. We discuss boundary conditions, alternative explanations, and the limits of causal inference in non-experimental panel data. Findings inform evolving BNPL regulatory frameworks in MENA, with particular relevance to nudge-transparency disclosures, contractual cooling-off periods, and credit-bureau reporting standards.

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