The 30-year-old man identified as Pakistan-American Shahzad Faisal, who is a naturalised US citizen and a resident of Connecticut, was arrested on Monday night, reports said.
MSNBC television reported that the suspect Faisal was arrested Monday night on Long Island while CNN said the man was nabbed while trying to board a plane for an unknown location at John F Kennedy International Airport.
MSNBC said the man had been linked to explosives-laden Nissan Pathfinder seized late Saturday at the busy Times Square. The suspect bought the Nissan Pathfinder in recent weeks with cash from its last owner in Connecticut.
The investigators tracked down the registered owner by the vehicle identification number.
It is still not clear whether the man was acting individually or is part of a terrorist outfit and reports suggest that man had travelled to Pakistan recently.
The former owner identified the buyer was of Middle Eastern or Hispanic descent, but could not recall his name, the New York Times said.
Authorities had launched a massive manhunt with the FBI's anti-terror unit and New York police to try to catch the would-be bomber.
Meanwhile, the police and FBI in the New York are examining surveillance tapes from the surrounding buildings.
"Investigators and agents also were scouring international phone records showing calls between some of the people who might be associated with this and folks overseas," an official who has discussed the case with intelligence officers was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.
The CNN also said that investigators are examining phone records of businesses that sell some of the bomb's components and chasing leads in "several locations" on the East Coast and beyond.
A federal law enforcement official, to whom CNN spoke, would not say whether any of the leads were in other countries, and cautioned that the investigation could take "a few more days or weeks."
The ABC news reported that there is growing evidence the bomber did not act alone and had ties to radical elements overseas.
Earlier, one senior official told the news channel that there are several individuals believed to be connected with the bombing and that at least one of them is a Pakistani-American.
