How Buy Now, Pay Later Helps Bigger Auto Repairs Get Approved

A customer comes in with a grinding noise and is hoping it’s just pads and rotors. The digital vehicle inspection tells a different story: a sticking caliper, worn brake lines, and brake fluid that should have been flushed two years ago.

Your service advisor writes an accurate estimate. The diagnosis is solid. The customer still says, “Let me think about it.”

In most shops, that moment has nothing to do with trust. The customer believes you. They just weren’t ready for the total. And as repair costs climb, that total is getting harder to say yes to.

Buy Now, Pay Later gives you a way to change the conversation. Instead of asking a customer to come up with the full amount at pickup, you show them what the repair costs per month, right on the estimate, before they decide. Here’s why that matters more than it did a few years ago, and how it works inside Tekmetric Payments.

The affordability gap is real, and it’s widening

The cost of keeping a car on the road has outpaced just about everything else in the household budget. Motor vehicle maintenance and repair prices rose 11.5% in 2023 and have kept climbing since, running more than 5% higher than a year ago as of spring 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, drivers are holding onto their vehicles longer. The average vehicle on U.S. roads is now a record 12.8 years old, and the average passenger car is 14.5, according to S&P Global Mobility.

Put those two trends together and you get the situation most shops are living with. Older vehicles need more work, and that work costs more. And the customer who used to approve a $900 repair without a second thought is now deciding which line items fit this month’s budget.

Your service advisors see it every day. The customer approves the pads and declines the caliper. The declined job gets saved to the repair order as recommended work. Sometimes that customer comes back for it. Often they don’t, and the work goes to another shop, or doesn’t get done at all.

What financing changes at the counter

Buy Now, Pay Later gives your customer a different number to react to. Instead of $1,149.98 due at pickup, they see what that repair costs per month, and they can pick a plan that fits.

With Tekmetric Payments, financing options from Affirm, Klarna, and Sunbit appear directly on the digital estimate your shop already sends. The customer taps “See if you qualify” from their phone, checks eligibility without affecting their credit, and chooses a plan. On a $1,149.98 estimate, that might look like six monthly payments of $191.66 at 0% APR, or a longer term with interest, depending on the provider and the customer’s approval.

From there, the customer signs the digital authorization, the work gets started, and your shop gets paid.

The timing is what makes this work. Financing shows up while the customer is still deciding, not after they’ve already said no. That’s why it sits right next to the digital vehicle inspection and the estimate in Tekmetric’s service advisor workflow. When you offer financing earlier in the decision, more of those decisions go your way.

Why financing moves your average repair order

Shops that offer financing through Tekmetric Payments see an average $200 increase in average repair order per month.

That isn’t upselling. It’s the caliper that doesn’t get deferred. When a customer can see the problem and afford the fix, the job that would have been declined gets approved, and your repair order reflects it.

It’s the same logic behind digital vehicle inspections. Tekmetric shops average $612 per repair order, and shops using inspections average $741, because customers approve more work when they can see what’s wrong. Financing does the same thing for cost. That’s why the top-performing shops on Tekmetric pair digital authorization, inspections, a parts and labor matrix, and financing. Each one removes a reason for the customer to say no.

What it means for your shop

You get paid in full, and you’re done. The financing provider pays your shop. The customer pays the provider over time. There’s no payment plan for your service advisor to manage, no balance to chase, and no awkward call three weeks later asking when the rest is coming.

It’s built into Tekmetric Payments. There’s no separate application to run, no third-party terminal, and no second login. Financing lives on the estimate and the invoice, and it reconciles with everything else at the end of the day.

Setup is a one-time step. Tekmetric Payments offers same-day setup, and the Payments team turns on financing as part of onboarding. After that, there’s nothing for your team to configure.

For your customer, it’s immediate. Financing appears on the estimate automatically. They check eligibility from their phone, get a decision from Affirm, Klarna, or Sunbit in moments, and approve the work. Your service advisor doesn’t walk anyone through an application or wait on a callback.

Your customers already use it. More than a third of U.S. consumers, and half of those under 40, used Buy Now, Pay Later in a 90-day period, according to J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Buy Now Pay Later Satisfaction Study. That’s up five points in a year. Small businesses have noticed, too: J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study found Buy Now, Pay Later now ranks ahead of checks as an accepted payment method.

Affirm, Klarna, and Sunbit are names your customers already know from buying furniture, electronics, and plane tickets. Seeing them on a brake estimate doesn’t need an explanation.

What your customers see

• Pay-over-time options directly on the estimate, before they approve the work
• An eligibility check that doesn’t affect their credit
• Plans that range from interest-free installments to longer monthly terms, depending on the provider
• The total they’ll pay, shown upfront

The question to ask your service advisors

How many jobs were declined last month because of cost? Not because the customer didn’t trust the recommendation, and not because the timing was off. Cost.

Pull the declined jobs report and take a look. If the answer is more than a handful, the repair nobody can afford is already costing your shop. Putting financing on the estimate is how shops get that work approved.

Already running your shop on Tekmetric?
‍Talk to our Payments team about adding Tekmetric Payments and offering financing on your estimates.

Not on Tekmetric yet?
‍Book a demo to see the all-in-one auto repair platform, with payments and financing built in.