New York: AFC Extension Request Letter for NYDFS BNPL RFI

The Honorable Adrienne Harris
New York State Department of Financial Services
1 State Street
New York, NY 10004

Re: Request for Extension on New York Department of Financial Services’ Request for Information Regarding Buy-Now-Pay-Later Activities

Dear Superintendent Harris:

On behalf of the American Fintech Council (AFC),  I write to respectfully request a 30-day extension of the deadline for responding to the New York Department of Financial Services’ (NYDFS or the Department) Request for Information Regarding Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) Activities (RFI).

AFC’s mission is to promote an innovative, transparent, inclusive, and customer-centric financial system by fostering responsible innovation in financial services, and encouraging sound public policy. AFC members are at the forefront of fostering competition in consumer finance and pioneering ways to better serve underserved consumer segments and geographies. Our members are also improving access to financial services and increasing overall competition in the financial services industry by supporting the responsible growth of lending and lowering the cost of financial transactions, allowing them to help meet demand for high-quality, affordable financial products.

Through our review of the RFI and conversations with our members, we have learned that the data requested by NYDFS requires significant time to fulfil due to administrative collection, aggregation, and review processes across member companies. It is our understanding that the duty of care required to ensure accurate and complete data, combined with the timing of the Department’s request could make providing the data in the originally prescribed timeframe untenable. In turn, though responsible industry participants seek to provide the most accurate and comprehensive data possible, the data that NYDFS receives from this request under the current RFI deadline may have deficiencies in either its accuracy or completeness.

As noted by NYDFS in its RFI announcement, the Department “aims to use data gathered through this RFI to help it develop and implement the regulations under the BNPL Act” and expects to refer to this data, aggregated and anonymized, in publications mandated by the State Administrative Procedure Act in the process of proposing and adopting regulations”.  Given the importance ascribed by NYDFS to the data it receives through the RFI, it seems incumbent upon the Department to ensure that it affords industry participants due care and consideration in compiling and transmitting the requested data.

Therefore, AFC requests that NYDFS allow a 30-day extension to September 30, 2025 to ensure that industry participants are able to provide the most accurate and comprehensive data possible and ensure that the collected data is well-suited to inform the Department’s forthcoming BNPL regulatory activities. We thank you for your consideration of our request and look forward to continuing our collaboration in these efforts.

Sincerely,

Ian P. Moloney
SVP, Head of Policy and Regulatory Affairs
American Fintech Council

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[1] AFC’s membership spans technology platforms, non-bank lenders, banks, payments providers, loan servicers, credit bureaus, and personal financial management companies.
[2] New York Department of Financial Services,“Industry Letter: Request for Information Regarding “Buy-Now-Pay-Later” Activities,” Jul. 31, 2025, available at https://www.dfs.ny.gov/industry_guidance/industry_letters/il20250731-rfi-bnpl-activities.