Daniel Defense, which allegedly manufactured the weapon used to kill 19 children and two adults last week at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, offers BNPL financing through the fintech Credova. Larger BNPL providers, like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna, do not work with firearms sellers in the U.S.

Why should we care?
Finance has long played an underacknowledged—yet contentious—role in the question of U.S. gun control. Reporting from 2018 by the New York Times uncovered that the majority of attackers in major mass shootings over the preceding decade had acquired their guns with credit cards—often purchasing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of weapons that they couldn’t have afforded otherwise. Banks and credit card providers, the Times argues, have access to key red flags that could prevent future mass shootings, but they don’t track or act on this information because they’re not required to by law, and they fear alienating gun-owning clients. In the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people, Citibank and Bank of America said they would no longer finance or advise gun manufacturers, while PayPal, Apple Pay, and Square reaffirmed that they do not allow the sale of guns through their systems. Wells Fargo, which counts the NRA as a client, rebuffed the gesture by Citibank and Bank of America. And, if anything, certain players in the BNPL landscape seem to consciously monetize contentious markets that larger players avoid. “Maybe because political beliefs or whatever it may be, a lot of our competition in other industries don’t like to come into this industry,” said Credova Chief Revenue Officer Kamron Davis. If other fintechs and banks respond to U.S. gun violence with policy changes—and as long as financial institutions don’t face new compliance laws regarding gun control—we should expect more Credova-like companies to pop up in the medium term.