The Top 5 Places You Can Use Afterpay and BNPL to Buy Magic Cards

Last updated on October 19, 2023

Final Payment | Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez

Whether you’re hitting the tournament circuit and need to fill out your latest Pioneer deck or looking for a deal on sealed booster boxes to draft with your friends, buying online is always going to be one of your most convenient options. That said, Magic can be a pricey hobby at times. Finding convenient and flexible payment options can help get the cards you need into your hands faster.

Lots of online retailers offer buy-now-pay-later options through Afterpay, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. These all generally offer payment plans through installments as an option for the buyer.

Today I’m going to explore the five best BNPL retailers for buying Magic cards online. Let’s get into it!

#5. Official Secret Lair Site

This one is for those of you with more specific tastes. The Wizards-owned Secret Lair site supports Google Pay as an option, but naturally, you’re limited to the current Secret Lair sales happening on the site.

If you somehow missed out on the Secret Lair craze, they’re time-sensitive hand-picked collector items featuring a wide variety of reprints with wildly different artistic themes. Secret Lairs aren’t actually distributed and charged until production wraps up, often a decent chunk of time later than your preorder.

You can choose to charge your account right away or wait for later notifications from Wizards, but either way, you’ll have some flexibility in how you pay.

#4. Card Shop Live

You might recognize Card Shop Live for their advertising of MTG bundles. It’s not uncommon for them to run promos for sealed products lumped together with playmats, deck boxes, and other accessories (especially those fancy CommandFest Sol Rings).

This isn’t the premier place to pick up singles, but it is one of the best options for sealed products. Especially given the competitive pricing for their bundle deals. Google Pay and Shop Pay are available at checkout for payment flexibility.

#3. Star City Games

Card prices on Star City Games tend to edge towards the higher end in my experience. While you can snag a sealed booster box or Commander deck for about what you’d pay anywhere else, prices typically run slightly above market value. There’s a wide selection to choose from, but Standard staples run out of stock quickly and preorder prices are sometimes questionable.

I’d advise against buying singles from Star City, but their sealed product prices tend to be more reasonable. They also offer a pay-later option through PayPal, which is simple and easy to find at any point during checkout.

#2. eBay

eBay gives you plenty of options as a consumer in terms of card selection and payment methods. But it’s a barterer’s playhouse when it comes to online purchases. You can find just about any version of any card you’re looking for, but the asking prices are determined by the sellers, meaning you’ll see absurdly high asking prices but also find the perfect deal here and there if you search diligently enough.

I recommend cross-comparing prices with other sites like TCGPlayer, but you have a few BNPL options once you’ve found a good deal on what you’re looking for. eBay offers Google Pay as well as PayPal Credit, which can be found directly on the product page.

#1. TCGPlayer

If you’ve ever made an in-person trade, sold cards online, or wanted to just check up on the price of a card you opened in your latest Draft, odds are you’ve visited TCGPlayer. This site is still the golden standard for card pricing with one of the easiest-to-search databases. They’re basically a one-stop marketplace for all of your Magic needs, and the go-to dealer for buying Magic singles in my experience.

If you’re looking for an installment plan on your TCGPlayer purchase, there’s a “Pay in 4” option through PayPal that’s easily accessible on each item page. It’s worth noting that TCGPlayer recently announced their acquisition of ChannelFireball, another Magic-focused site that recently converted to a marketplace-style vendor. CFB doesn’t offer BNPL options (yet), but it remains to be seen how this merger affects that down the line.

Time to Check Out

High Market | Illustration by Carl Critchlow

You probably noticed a few omissions on my list if you’re a long-term Magic player. Some vendors, like CardKingdom and ChannelFireball, certainly have a great selection of Magic products, but they don’t provide the same BNPL flexibility as the other sellers. The same is true of Amazon, one of the biggest Magic sellers out there.

The options listed here are your best bet for finding what you need with flexible payment options, and most of them (with the exception of eBay) are Magic-focused sites dedicated to delivering quality cards and sealed products. Which of these sites is your favorite? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Twitter.

Hopefully, this helps you find those last few cards you need to finish your deck while easing some of the trouble at checkout. Have a good one!

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