Pay in 3: from 20 November, it's credit advertising

Saturday morning, early November, an electronics megastore on the retail park at Marcianise. The neon doesn't so much light the place as slap against the white casings of the washing machines and bounce off the grey tiles, leaving no shadow at all. A wall of fifty TVs shows the same match, volume low, each screen half a second out of sync with the next. Ten minutes in the aisles and you can feel it in your temples.

I stopped in front of the fridge freezers. Next to a brushed-steel model stood a rigid red sign, exactly at eye level. White lettering, enormous:

‘Buy today, pay in 24 easy monthly instalments from January 2027’.

I see one like it in almost every big appliance, phone and furniture chain. The whole game comes down to two numbers: how many instalments, and when you pay the first one.

I'm not here to moralise. I've bought most of my appliances on instalments, smartphones too. I'm saying this as a customer before I say it as a consultant: I know exactly how much weight the word ‘January’ carries. January's a long way off. January is some other me's problem, the one who'll have got over Christmas by then. You take the fridge home in November and the bill turns up in another year, almost another life.

That sign, though, wasn't a kindness. It was a device. And at the bottom, in tiny type, sat the only line of caution: ‘Subject to finance approval’.

Two weeks earlier I was in London, on Mare Street in Hackney. Fine drizzle, the smell of wet rubber and coffee from the café next door. In the window of Bobby's shop — he's been selling and fixing bikes for fourteen years — there was a £2,400 e-bike and a white sticker on the glass: ‘Spread the cost’. Nothing else. And yet, since July, Bobby can't write those three words himself any more.

So here's my position, and I'll stick to it until the last line: paying in instalments isn't a service. It's a loan.

Anyone using instalments as bait is selling credit, whether they know it or not. ‘Pay in 3’ isn't an extra like having it carried upstairs: it's a credit agreement. From 20 November, European law wants it called by its proper name. The UK got there in July. Whoever says it first, and says it well, comes out ahead.

What happens on 20 November, and why the real date might be a different one

Where we're coming from: the grey area

For years, ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) grew up in a grey area. The old European consumer credit rules left out loans under €200, loans with no interest and no other charges, and loans repayable within three months with negligible charges. ‘Pay in 3’ sat comfortably inside all three exemptions.

Meanwhile, the market exploded. According to the Politecnico di Milano's Innovative Payments Observatory, BNPL in Italy moved €9.9 billion in 2025, 45% more than the year before: €7.9 billion online and €2 billion in physical shops. It's not limited-edition trainers any more. It's the winter coat, the car service, the kid's smartphone.

The new European Consumer Credit Directive, (EU) 2023/2225, which everyone calls CCD2, closes that grey area. It scraps the €200 minimum threshold, raises the maximum to €100,000 and brings interest-free credit inside the perimeter too. Even the €35 split payment on a pair of trainers.

The rules, in order

• The transposing decree. That's Legislative Decree no. 212 of 31 December 2025, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale (Italy's Official Journal) on 9 January 2026 and in force from the following day. It rewrites the chapter of the Consolidated Banking Act (TUB) on consumer credit.
• The advertising rules. These were set by the decree of the Interministerial Committee for Credit and Savings (CICR) of 9 July 2026, published in the Gazzetta on 17 August. The Bank of Italy put it up on its website on 20 October.

The ‘moving’ date

On paper, lenders and intermediaries have to comply by Friday 20 November 2026. But the decree adds a clause: if the Bank of Italy's implementing provisions come into force after that date, the deadline becomes 90 days from that point.

As of today, those provisions haven't come out. On 6 November the journal Diritto Bancario was still describing them as ‘forthcoming’, and it's organised a webinar to analyse them on 15 December. For banks, finance companies and BNPL platforms, the deadline will in all likelihood slip into early 2027. Some commentators also point out that the directive sets 20 November with no exceptions, and that the Italian slippage isn't entirely in step with Brussels.

For Berto, who runs a furniture showroom or an appliance shop, none of this slippage is an excuse. For two reasons.

First: the Consumer Code's rules against misleading advertising already apply today, and the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) has fined fake ‘zero per cent’ offers more than once. Second: when your payment provider gets itself compliant, it'll send you new materials and new terms. Better to be ready for it than to be chasing it. It's too late to rethink your Black Friday offer, I know: the terms get set earlier, as I wrote in The discount is decided on 28 October (not in November). But it's not too late to rewrite a sign.

Agreements already signed

Loans already running stay under the previous rules. The exception is open-ended agreements, such as credit lines that are always open, which will have to be brought into line.

Where does your shop sit? The three boxes

Before you touch a sign, you need to know which box you're in. It doesn't depend on what you sell. It depends on who collects the instalments, and who's behind them.

The box 1 trap

Almost every business owner in Campania I talk to puts themselves in box 1. ‘Umberto, I don't use finance companies. I've known this customer twenty years, he pays me in three goes, I don't charge him a single euro.’

The first limit is time. Free deferred payment that you run yourself only stays out if it's settled within 50 days of delivery. Sell a wardrobe today with the last instalment landing at 90 days, and you're outside the exclusion, even without a cent of interest.

The second limit is subtler, and it's what I call fake own deferred payment. To the customer you're the only point of contact, but behind you there's an agreement with a finance company that buys your receivables without recourse, meaning it takes on the risk that the customer won't pay, either straight away or later down the line. The law looks at substance: in that case the credit counts as offered by a third party. You're in box 2, with everything that comes with it.

For online sellers that aren't micro, small or medium-sized enterprises, the exclusion is even tighter: 14 days.

The OAM register and information for the customer

For those in box 2 there's some good news. Italy has taken up an option the directive allows: micro-enterprises and SMEs that offer credit only as an ancillary activity don't have to register with the OAM (the Italian body for credit agents and brokers). If you sell sofas and offer Findomestic, you don't turn into a credit broker.

That doesn't let you off transparency. It's not your job to hand over the Standard European Consumer Credit Information form, but the lender has to make sure the customer gets it before signing. Your checkout mustn't skip that step.

If you offer your own payment terms, do the maths again

Some of my clients let customers pay for their services in instalments, with no interest and no finance company. It's not a loan: it's deferred payment. For years nobody gave it a second thought. After this reform, they're precisely the ones who need to get the calendar out and start counting: beyond 50 days, free deferred payment comes inside the credit perimeter.

What that means in practice, right now, nobody knows for sure. The new TUB allows the Bank of Italy to set up a simplified regime for these cases, but that regime lives in the very provisions that don't exist yet. I'll say it straight, without second-guessing: it's an open question. In the meantime there's just one bit of practical advice. If you can wrap up the deferred payment within 50 days, wrap it up within 50 days.

The sign: what you can write and what you can't

Who answers for the sign?

The rule on ads, Article 123 of the TUB, talks about ‘advertisements’ without saying who signs them off. In practice, the Bank of Italy's transparency supervision covers the lender and the intermediary it uses. But the Consumer Code applies to anyone selling to a consumer, shopkeepers included. Since 2023, AGCM fines for unfair commercial practices have ranged from €5,000 to €10 million.

It's the same logic I described in 27 September: the green label becomes an offence: whatever you put in your window, you put your name to, even if someone else sent you the copy.

Exactly how the obligations split between lender and shopkeeper is still being argued over by lawyers. I wouldn't wait for a court ruling to find out. Act as if the obligation were yours, and insist on up-to-date materials from your provider.

The warning

The CICR decree requires credit ads to carry a clear, prominent warning:

‘Attenzione! Prendere in prestito denaro costa denaro’ (‘Warning! Borrowing money costs money’), or equivalent wording.

It's not a line to tuck away in light grey at the bottom of the page. In practice, on a ten-centimetre sticker by the till it needs to be readable from a metre away. In a fifteen-second Instagram story it has to stay up long enough to actually be read. At checkout it has to sit next to the payment option, before the confirm button, not behind a click.

Put a number on it, and the representative example kicks in

This is the technical heart of the matter. Under Article 123 of the TUB, an ad that states the interest rate or any other figures relating to the cost of credit must set out, by way of a representative example:

• the interest rate, fixed or variable, and the charges included in the cost of credit;
• the total amount of credit;
• the TAEG, the annual percentage rate of charge (Italy's equivalent of the APR);
• any compulsory ancillary services, such as an insurance policy;
• the duration of the agreement;
• the total amount payable and the amount of each instalment.

Does the sign from the opening trigger this obligation? The rule refers to figures ‘relating to the cost’ of credit, and the number of instalments isn't a cost in itself. But ‘24 instalments from January’ affects the duration, the size of the instalments and therefore the cost. I'd treat it as though the obligation kicks in. It's the most cautious reading, and it's also the one that shows the most respect for whoever reads the sign.

Here's what it would look like, with example figures:

Illustrative example. €1,200 fridge freezer, no deposit. 24 monthly instalments of €53.39 plus a €2 collection fee per instalment, the first in January 2027. Fixed TAN (nominal rate) 5.90%. Arrangement fee €30. TAEG 12.24%. Total amount of credit €1,200, total amount payable €1,359.36. Subject to finance approval. Warning! Borrowing money costs money.

Look at the two rates: 5.90% and 12.24%. The second is more than double the first, and it's built entirely out of small bits: €30 up front, €2 a month, and two months' wait before the first instalment. (Calculated with the loan paid out in mid-November, excluding stamp duty.)

If there isn't room on the sign for all that, the answer isn't to shrink the font. It's to take the numbers out and just say finance is available, with the warning.

The three things you can't make people believe any more

The CICR decree bans credit advertising that:

1. suggests credit will improve the customer's financial situation;
2. plays down the weight of existing debts or of entries on credit databases;
3. presents credit as a source of extra money, a substitute for savings or a way to improve your standard of living.

Turned into shop-window lines, which I've written myself as examples:

• ‘Treat yourself to the fridge you deserve, without touching your bank balance’ → credit as lifestyle.
• ‘Don't give it a thought, pay in January’ → debt as something you can put off thinking about.
• ‘You won't feel the instalments, keep your savings in the bank’ → credit as a substitute for saving.

‘Zero interest’ doesn't mean ‘zero cost’

To explain it to Berto, I use Gragnano pasta. The TAN is the price per kilo of bronze-die paccheri, printed on the bag at the pasta maker's. The TAEG is the restaurant bill once they've cooked those paccheri for you: tomatoes, oil, cover charge, service, water. Look only at the price per kilo and you'll think you've spent two euros.

The TAN measures interest and nothing else. The TAEG covers the whole cost of the credit: interest, arrangement fee, instalment collection, taxes, compulsory insurance. A ‘0% TAN’ loan with a €30 arrangement fee isn't zero cost. In its consumer credit guide, the Bank of Italy advises being wary of ‘zero rate’ ads and checking that the TAEG is zero too, not just the TAN.

Before and after: four formats

The copy is mine, written as examples. ‘FintechPay’ is a made-up brand.

At checkout, how you show it matters too. The instalment option mustn't win on design. No BNPL button bigger and brighter than the normal payment one. No pre-selected option. No costs written in a grey nobody can read. On a credit decision these tricks count double, because they nudge the customer into debt without them noticing. Payment options should be shown on equal terms: same size, nothing pre-selected, costs as legible as the price. They're the same mechanisms I covered in The trick that's now an offence: dark patterns, the DSA and deceptive design.

Hackney: how Bobby does it

Bobby's got a black line of grease under his fingernails and a waxed canvas apron with Allen keys tucked into the top pocket. When I asked who'd written his ‘Spread the cost’ sticker, he shrugged: ‘The provider. I don't touch any of it. If I touch it, it's my problem.’

He's right. And it's the most interesting difference between the two countries.

What's been regulated since July

Since 15 July 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK's financial services regulator, has supervised BNPL. It calls it Deferred Payment Credit (DPC): interest-free, fee-free credit offered by a lender other than the seller, repayable in no more than 12 instalments within 12 months. Until July those loans were exempt. Now they're a regulated activity.

What applies to Bobby

• No authorisation for him. The UK government has excluded retailers who offer DPC from regulation. Bobby stays a shopkeeper.
• But promotions go through someone else. In the UK, a financial promotion made by someone who isn't authorised has to be approved by an FCA-authorised firm (that's the section 21 rule of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, which also carries criminal liability). The old exemption that let retailers promote these loans doesn't cover DPC.
• The detail that decides everything. According to analysis by the law firm Lewis Silkin, BNPL providers in the temporary regime can approve their own promotions for circulation through retailers, but not copy written by the retailer. So Bobby uses the provider's materials and doesn't rewrite them. Not so much as a comma.

How it compares with my clients

There's one area where the UK is far more relaxed than Italy. Interest-free credit granted directly by the seller, with no finance company involved, stays exempt: up to 12 instalments within 12 months.

Take two joiners. The one in Salford sells a £5,000 bespoke kitchen and lets the customer pay in four quarterly instalments, interest-free: he's outside the perimeter. The one in San Leucio does the same with a €5,000 table: after 50 days, he's in. Same workshop, same trade, two opposite ideas of trust between the person selling and the person buying.

What the ASA says

Even before the FCA, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's advertising regulator, had set out its ground rules for BNPL:

• it must be clear that it's credit;
• you can't say the service doesn't affect your credit history unless you can prove it;
• you can't present it as suitable for everyone or risk-free;
• if you call it ‘free’, the pricing rules apply in full.

Through Insight ADV, I integrate into my UK clients' e-commerce sites whatever solutions they've chosen themselves, Creation included. The first question I ask these days isn't about the plugin. It's: who approved your copy?

Italy and the UK compared

Italy puts the warning inside the ad. The UK puts a gatekeeper in front of the ad. Two diagnoses of the same disease: the idea that a debt can be dressed up as a gift.

Who's already been caught out

In the cases that follow, the problem was never the credit. It was the disguise.

Fiat and ‘zero rate’ (Italy)

In its 2009 annual report, the AGCM describes proceedings PS654 against Fiat: finance sold as ‘zero rate’ when the TAEG varied from model to model. If the customer pays back even one euro more, the zero isn't creative licence. It's false information.

Accord Italia and collection charges (Italy)

In its 2010 report, the AGCM describes the Accord Italia case: an offer presented with TAN and TAEG at 0% over ten instalments, which nonetheless left the instalment collection charges out of the TAEG. So the finance did cost something. The lesson for anyone putting together a Black Friday leaflet is simple: zero only counts if it's zero across the board.

Wonga and the puppets (UK, 2014)

In April 2014 the ASA ruled that a Wonga TV ad was misleading, because it implied the short-term lender's representative APR of 5,853% didn't matter. In July that year Wonga announced it was ditching the elderly puppets that had become the face of its advertising. A likeable character doesn't make a rate likeable.

Klarna and the lockdown influencers (UK, 2020)

In December 2020 the ASA ruled irresponsible a set of posts by influencers who, during lockdown, linked shopping with Klarna to lifting your mood. Klarna admitted it had ‘missed the mark’. That's the CICR decree's third ban, six years early. If you're working with creators for Black Friday, the place to start is The local influencer now has a contract (and so do you): an AGCOM guide for SMEs.

DivideBuy and ‘the smarter way to pay’ (UK, 2021)

In October 2021 the ASA banned a pitchside hoarding from DivideBuy carrying the slogan ‘the smarter way to pay’. The ASA found it presented credit as a sensible, risk-free choice for any purchase, and didn't make clear that it was credit. The ad mustn't appear again.

Clearpay and the Squid Game memes (UK, 2022)

In 2022 the ASA ruled some of Clearpay's Instagram posts socially irresponsible: Squid Game–inspired memes joking about not being able to stick to a budget. The detail worth remembering is a different one, though. The caption included a nudge to spend responsibly, and it wasn't enough. A line of caution doesn't cancel out what the image is saying.

That's the lesson tying all these cases together: a disclaimer isn't washing-up liquid. It doesn't wash away what you've already said.

Who's getting it right

I went looking for positive examples I could verify. There are some in the UK. In Italy I couldn't find a campaign documented by a reliable source, and I'd rather say so than make one up.

A shop: Lookfantastic's page (UK)

The page where online beauty retailer Lookfantastic explains Clearpay does exactly what the Marcianise sign didn't. It says the credit is subject to status (‘Clearpay credit subject to status’) and that there are creditworthiness and affordability checks. It asks you to make sure you can pay the instalments on time. It explains the £6 fee per late instalment and warns that late payments can affect your credit history. It's the ‘after’ from the table above, done by a real shop.

A provider that changed course: Clearpay

The same brand that got pulled up in 2022 now gives retailers ready-made promotional materials where the first line is clear: ‘Clearpay is credit’, with a pointer to the terms, conditions and late fees. On its pages it says ‘Please use responsibly’. And in August 2025 it brought in a spending cap that customers can set for themselves.

A brand can put itself right. Doing it in public is worth more than any fine it dodges.

The Italian standard

In Italy the clearest benchmark isn't a campaign, it's a definition. For the Bank of Italy, a genuine ‘zero rate’ is one where TAN and TAEG are both zero. Anything else is finance that costs, even if it doesn't cost much.

My position: instalments aren't a conversion lever

Paying in instalments makes sense for a big, considered purchase: the fridge that's packed up, the smartphone you need for work, the family kitchen. There, it's a proper service, and it should be offered as one, with all its figures on show.

It turns into a disease when it replaces the story of value. When the instalment gets put where the price should be, because nobody knows how to defend the price. It's the same disease as low-cost: instead of explaining why something's worth what it costs, you make sure the cost can't be seen. I wrote about it in The price that scares people off: pricing psychology for those who don't want to look like the cheapest.

‘Pay from January’ is the most telling detail of the lot. It doesn't sell the fridge. It sells the distance from the moment you'll realise you've paid for it.

The shopkeeper who's first to write ‘careful, this is a loan’ doesn't lose customers. Only the ones who'd never have paid the third instalment.

The sign, one more time

Back in front of that fridge, under the Marcianise neon. ‘24 instalments from January 2027’ means the last instalment gets paid at the end of 2028. That's a promise that runs for two years in a family's life. It deserves more than a single line of tiny type at the bottom of a piece of red foamex.

A declaration, for transparency. In the e-commerce sites I build with Insight ADV, I only integrate instalment payment solutions when the client asks for them, and only with services they've chosen and that are in their name: Findomestic, PayPal, Scalapay or Klarna in Italy, Creation in the UK. I don't sell credit and I don't have agreements with any finance company.

If you fancy it, before your provider's new materials turn up, let's go through your payment messaging together: signs, website, checkout, social. It's a few hours' work, and Black Friday won't wait for the Bank of Italy. Drop me a line.

Paying in instalments isn't a service. It's a loan. Write it yourself, before someone else writes it for you.

A word of caution. This article is a piece on communications and marketing, not legal or financial advice. The rules are up to date as of 10 November 2026. The Bank of Italy's implementing provisions haven't been published yet and may clarify or change some aspects, including compliance deadlines and the obligations of those offering their own deferred payment. Some points, such as how advertising obligations are split between lender and retailer, or the point at which the number of instalments triggers the representative example, are still open to interpretation. The figures in the representative example are illustrative. Before changing your materials, check your position with your payment provider and a qualified professional, in Italy and in the UK alike.