Written by: RBA Insights — Posted on: April 23, 2025

In a report published by Billboard on April 17, 2025 Coachella made a quiet but remarkable announcement. More than 60 percent of its ticket sales were purchased using financing. Think about that. Tens of thousands of consumers financed a music festival. Not a car, not a mattress, not even a refrigerator. A concert.

This is no longer about what people can or cannot afford. It is about what people choose to afford, on their own terms, using their own payment timelines. And for furniture retailers, that should be a wake-up call.

BNPL is not just a payment method. It is an economic behavior. It is becoming deeply ingrained in the lives of young consumers who are now growing into full-scale buyers of homes, furniture, and everything that fills them. And yet, the furniture industry continues to treat BNPL as a feature to be added at checkout, rather than a fundamental shift in customer psychology.

At a time when more shoppers expect flexible payments as a default, many furniture retailers are still relying entirely on third-party solutions to close these deals. These services, such as Progressive, Snap, Klarna, and others, serve a clear purpose. They eliminate risk for the retailer and deliver payment up front. But they also reassign the customer relationship to someone else. And that is the part nobody seems to be talking about.

When a retailer hands off the financing relationship, they hand off the power that comes with it. They become a participant in someone else’s transaction, rather than the architect of their own.

This might feel like a necessary trade. After all, getting paid in full immediately feels like a win. But beneath that simplicity is a cost that compounds over time. The store no longer owns the data. The store no longer controls the terms. The store no longer defines the post-purchase journey. The store, for all intents and purposes, is no longer at the center of the purchase. The financing company is. That might be acceptable if retailers had no alternative. But that is where the conversation needs to shift. Because furniture stores are uniquely positioned to take back control.

They already have the assets. The product itself holds value and retains it. It can be retrieved, reconditioned, and resold. They already have the infrastructure. They operate trucks, teams, service departments, and logistics systems capable of reaching customers at scale. They already have the point of sale, the real-world presence, the inventory intelligence, and the customer base. And yet, all of that power is being rented out in exchange for a little speed and a little certainty. What would it look like for furniture retailers to think differently? Not in theory. In practice. Not through partnerships. Through reinvention.

The goal is not to create a new finance company. It is to reframe what it means to finance value. What if the real opportunity is not charging interest, but building the total package? What if retailers offered flexible payments not as a financial product, but as a value structure? A structure where the margin is not in the interest rate, but in the ecosystem. Covers. Pillows. Protection plans. Delivery services. Upgrades. Add-ons that expand the sale and justify the terms. This is not about risk tolerance. It is about strategic buying structure.

If furniture retailers remain passive, they will continue to be cut out of the most valuable part of the transaction. The relationship. The decision-making. The loyalty. The customer does not remember the checkout button. They remember who made the purchase feel accessible.

And that is what BNPL is really doing. It is not enabling purchases. It is enabling access. It is training the market to believe that access should no longer be delayed by cost. And that belief is not going away. Teenagers and young adults using BNPL today are going to age into the furniture-buying class tomorrow. And when they do, they will not be asking which store has the best product. They will be asking which store is willing to meet them where they already are. In mindset. In flexibility. In payment structure.

BNPL is not a tech gimmick. It is a generational shift in how trust is built at the point of sale. The future does not belong to the fastest shipper, the cheapest provider, or the biggest brand. It will belong to the furniture retailer that has the courage to ask, "Why not us?"Why not now? Because every time a retailer pushes a transaction through a service like Klarna, Affirm, Acima, or Snap, they are subtly teaching the customer to trust the platform over the store. That might not seem like a problem in the short term, especially when the store is getting paid upfront and the sale is secured. But over time, the brand equity that once belonged to the retailer is slowly transferred elsewhere. This is not a hypothetical concern. It’s already happening.

Customers now speak of “financing through Affirm, Snap Finance, Acima, Kolalifi, Synchrony, TD Bank” as if those companies are the seller. They remember how quickly they approved them, not which retailer they bought from. When they log in to check their balance, they interact with the app, not the store. And when they go to make another purchase, their instinct is not to revisit the showroom. It’s to open the financing app and see where they can shop next.

In this model, the store becomes interchangeable. Invisible. Replaceable. And that is the long-term risk too few furniture retailers are acknowledging. Third-party platforms are not neutral partners. They are brands. Brands with marketing budgets, customer service departments, and roadmaps designed to deepen their own direct relationships with consumers. The more they grow, the more they absorb. The more they absorb, the more retailers are disintermediated.

And when retailers lose that direct connection to the customer, they lose the ability to influence future behavior. They lose upsell opportunities. They lose repeat purchases. They lose referral value. Most importantly, they lose position in the customer's mind. This is not a warning against all third-party financing. These platforms offer tremendous value, especially when speed and risk-reduction are critical. But retailers must be careful not to allow convenience to replace strategy.

Because convenience is only an asset when it doesn’t erode trust. And in the furniture category where margins are tight, buying cycles are long, and customer confidence matters, trust is everything. Furniture retailers must begin to ask different questions.

Not “How fast can we get paid?” But “Who owns the relationship when the payment is done?” Not “Which company offers the best approval rates?” But “How do we remain relevant in the buyer’s long-term purchasing life?” If customers no longer feel they’re buying from you, then you’re not selling furniture. You’re facilitating transactions on someone else’s platform. You’re renting relevance and sooner or later, rent always comes due.

The future of furniture retail will not be built on one-time transactions. It will be built on long-term relationships, brand consistency, and the ability to adapt without disappearing. The best retailers will not eliminate third-party tools. They will redefine their role. And in doing so, they will protect what matters most, the customer’s memory of who made it all possible.