Buy now, pay later is one of the most reliable categories StatusBird monitors. Over the 180 days ending July 2026, all four major BNPL providers earned an A+ grade: Klarna and Affirm at a perfect 100% with zero major incidents, Afterpay at 99.98% (2 incidents, 28 minutes total), and Sezzle at 99.96% (1 incident, 62 minutes).
The numbers, side by side
| Metric (180 days ending July 2026) | Klarna | Afterpay | Affirm | Sezzle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime (major/critical incidents) | 100% | 99.98% | 100% | 99.96% |
| StatusBird reliability grade | A+ | A+ | A+ | A+ |
| Major or critical incidents | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Total downtime | 0 minutes | 28 minutes | 0 minutes | 62 minutes |
How these numbers are measured: StatusBird checks each service's status every 2 minutes, around the clock. Uptime counts major and critical incidents over the 180 days ending July 2026; brief degraded periods are excluded so chronically noisy status pages do not distort the comparison. Full details on the methodology page.
Does BNPL reliability actually matter at these levels?
More than the raw minutes suggest. BNPL options measurably lift average order value and conversion for the stores that offer them, which means a BNPL outage does not take your checkout down, it silently removes the payment option some customers came to use. Those customers mostly do not switch methods; they leave. A 30-minute BNPL blip during a peak evening is invisible unless you are watching for it.
Individual histories
Live status and incident history for each: Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm, and Sezzle.
The practical setup
Offer at least one BNPL provider alongside cards, monitor the one you offer, and treat a BNPL alert during peak hours as a real revenue event: consider a banner pointing customers to the working payment methods until it recovers. The general playbook for payment-path outages is in what to do when Stripe goes down; the same logic applies.
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