According to Xbox cloud gaming tool Better xCloud, it’s looking like the Xbox console’s website could soon start accepting Buy Now, Pay Later payments via PayPal and Klarna. These are ways to buy products from online stores in a number of staggered payments, rather than all up front, and they’re somewhat problematic.
According to Better xCloud’s X account, “The Xbox website will have the ‘Buy now Pay later’ feature via Paypal & Klarna,” which it evidences with a purported screenshot of site code for the Xbox website that spells out the feature.
“Buy what you love and pay later,” says the text in the screenshot. “Pay later options offer flexibility to break payments up over weeks or months.” It then lists both PayPal’s Pay Later offering, as well as Klarna’s Flexible Payments. We’ve reached out to Xbox to ask if this is genuine.
The Xbox website will have the “Buy now Pay later” feature via Paypal & Klarna pic.twitter.com/ZdVnKOtOFi
— red // Better xCloud (@redphx) June 15, 2026
PayPal and Klarna’s delayed payment systems have become ubiquitous across the web over the last few years, with many online retailers offering them as an option during checkout. When used, the respective company pays for your purchase in full, and then you are required to repay them in the agreed installments across the agreed time period. And if that happens, there are no extra fees or charges. However, when a customer is unable to keep up those repayments, that’s when things can get more expensive.
Both PayPal and Klarna’s options primarily make their money from the merchants themselves, reportedly taking up to five percent of the purchase price as a transaction fee for offering the financing system—something that’s worthwhile for the retailers given it encourages purchases from those who wouldn’t be able to pay up front. However, a signification proportion of the revenue comes from longer-term payment options under which APR rates are paid, and more troublingly, in penalties for those who miss a payment.
And that’s the idea, right? People who can’t afford an up-front purchase are far more likely to later not be able to pay a weekly or monthly installment. Those penalties are smaller than you might expect, with the maximum missed payment fee in the U.S. set at $7, and that’s after a grace period of 10 days. But continued missed payments will rack up to the point of debt collection agencies being called and credit ratings being damaged. It’s pretty lenient compared to many other financing options, but the objection remains that it’s encouraging people to spend money they don’t yet have.
If true, this is presumably aimed at encouraging purchases of Xbox consoles during a difficult time for sales of the machines, although if applied across the website it could also become an option for picking up increasingly expensive video games themselves.
