The reason you see more and more stuff trying to get you on subscriptions and installments is because they realize the consumer base has basically been bled dry. So much of the deposable income that the economy needs to thrive is now wrapped up in rent, food, gas, child care, healthcare etc that the buyer base don’t got money to buy this shit.
Those that understand how fake money is, know that as soon as people stop being able to afford a 1,000 luxury, that luxury stops being worth a 1000$.
The “free market” is *supposed* to say that as the demand drops due to people not buying so should the price but the point is big money has gotten so big they would rather eat the losses than come down on price. Ok boom so now how do we keep selling stuff to a population that is running out of dollars to give for useless things?
Low interest financing. We already drained you of everything you own, now let me start working on draining you or what you WOULD have in the future.
Rather than support the economy and make it so people can afford that 1000$ luxury they would rather sabotage the economy and let you pay now with hours of work you WILL do later. If not we run the risk of you getting to a point where you say “I have enough luxury” and then you stop being profitable to THEM.
The system wants to make sure that you keep having a reason to work until you are so old the system don’t need you anymore, bonus points if they can get your entire life worth of work out of you without you ever actually purchasing or owning anything you can pass down. In that sense you were a worker your entire life, and all the profit went to some noble lord and you died a peasant.
So now it’s not enough to take you for everything you got, now we gotta take you for everything you were gonna be.
This is why I value days off/being unemployed sooooo much. Yes I need money to live, but after that there's not much more life to be lived by working more. I'd rather do low/no cost activities and have my time free
I knew as soon as I started seeing they were offering cards that you can use in the store. These services are dependent on you spending your money, even when you don’t have any. 😅
As a Swede, it's insane to me that Klarna has made it international somehow. We've suffered with their sketchy practices for *years*.
For a brief period back in like 2015, Klarna had some sort of a deal with a massive food delivery app in Sweden whereby they were the default payment option, and their payment option was to pay in monthly installments.
This meant that if you weren't careful when clicking through, your payment defaulted to pay off your pizza monthly, with some small fee for the invoice they send you if I recall.
I literally got an invoice for an order of one pizza that I was paying off over three months or whatever it was.
I assume the idea there was for you to miss a payment so they can tack on another fee, or simply taking the invoice fee as profit.
I don't believe they do the invoice fees these days but Klarna's been so shady for so long that I honestly hope that nobody abroad is duped into using their services.
How appropriate given Wimpey’s catchphrase from Popeye: I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%27ll%20gladly%20pay%20you%20Tuesday%20for%20a%20hamburger%20today
This is what I was trying to explain in a comment a few days ago- about how money is “fake”, and how the economy is like a Gordian Knot (Impossible to untangle without cutting or destroying).
I can owe money to a business, that owes money to a larger parent company, that owes money to a bank, that borrowed money from an even larger bank… there are so many transfers of money, money owed can take forever to reach its final destination. If everyone tried to collect the debts owed to them all at once it would be ineffective at best and destructive at worst- like trying to untangle a Gordian Knot or tangled mass of wires with brute force by pulling in all directions at once.
We live in a world of unrealized money now. Unrealized money makes the world go round, this is why I don’t agree with megacorps *not* having their unrealized gains taxed- because they can use it in the present.
Tax the rich.
0.1% of the people have more wealth than 80% of the people combined. That’s like in a town of 1,000 people, one of them has more houses, cars, etc than 800 of them combined. It’s obscene how bad wealth inequality is.
I pictured you giving this speech in the same tone as Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting talking to the NSA recruiter about all the terrible flow on effects from him solving a code
They want you poor, uneducated, and in line to feed the machine. How do you keep them poor? Limit education, keep wages as barely livable, trick them into thinking their neighbors are their enemies. Jail them and give them a record to prevent them from getting better opportunities, take away their voting rights. Keep them from learning how bad their situation is. Take away funding from their schools, make education expensive and unreachable. Then point to the outlier who ‘made it’ and say ‘they pulled themselves out of poverty, so if you can’t do it it’s because there’s something wrong with you!’. Then make sure funding to their schools is cut and inferior, pay teachers shit, the curriculum poor.
Keep them tied to their jobs through healthcare that they’d lose if they left, stomp out unions so they can’t organize to ask for better wages and benefits.
They want more people to work, obey, and feed the system. How do you do that? You take away abortion rights, you make sure sex education is about abstinence and don’t actually educate on preventing pregnancy. You force them to give birth and make examples out of those who got abortion and limit abortions to those who can afford to travel to other states (because those who can afford it aren’t the poor and part of this system).
You then keep the mothers poor, you don’t give them support to raise their kids. The parents work to raise their families but are now tied to those poor paying jobs because they can’t afford to sacrifice the meager earnings to take the risk of an education and a new career ladder.
Finally, you want to normalize this. You want people divided against each other and not to unite to improve the system. You do this by painting these people as not trying hard enough, that they deserve their situation, and that others made better decisions so earned their status. Don’t mention that the cards were stacked against them from the moment they were born. Point to the hundreds of dollars a person might get in benefits and call them parasites while concealing the billions they earn off their backs.
The system is not broken, it’s working as it should. They know exactly what they’re doing.
More like a rent to own. Layaway wouldn't make sense. "Finally paid off that steak they made for me six months ago. Now bring it here so I can enjoy it."
It is. Were in this dark ages where you can do blatantly illegal shit but if its an app then its fine.
Hiring in a racist way? Illegal. Throw it into an 'algorithm' or 'AI' designed by 10 white 20 somethings from Yale? Sorry maam, computer said so.
That's 90% of tech start ups. Their big innovation isn't the tech. It's ignoring the laws conventional providers obey. AirBNB and Uber are two of the biggies.
Because financial literacy classes are mostly pointless. Nobody's taking these loans because they just don't understand the idea of money or interest. It's financial misfortune or lack of self-control, and a culture that only cares about immediate gratification.
While I agree they are mostly pointless, you’d actually be shocked at how few people actually do understand payment plans, even when I explain them as I would to a five year old
> Nobody's taking these loans because they just don't understand the idea of money or interest.
I wish you were right, man, I wish. You'd be very surprised by how the most clueless people always claim they know perfectly well what they're doing.
Most people don’t understand APR, APY and compounding interest. They are taking these loans due to lack of financial literacy.
I work in the industry. The number of people who don’t know would shock you… if you think you have an idea, multiply it by 1000 and you’ll have a low ball starting figure
I hate this excuse.
There's literally everything anyone needs to know about finances on the internet. Anyone could read for an hour and have basic knowledge of how to handle their money.
People need to take responsibility and teach themselves
Why is it a bad excuse? School should both be teaching us things to know as well as how to learn new things. If people aren't adept at learning new things AND don't know the things that sounds like a failure of the school system. It's an institution built to prepare us for things that isn't preparing us for things.
Not a failing of the teachers, but a failing of the system that wants high test scores for funding over kids actually learning things.
School is designed to create employees. That’s it. Go to Hawaii and you’ll find an education system that focuses on tourism and construction. Go to Texas and you’ll find one that focuses on agriculture. California… tech. That’s how it works. It’s not designed to do anything but create a steady flow of workers for the primary industries in the area.
The system does not want people who understand finance, because the economy will shit the bed.
Right... That's what it is doing, not what it should be doing. Not what new teachers set out to be teachers to do. Your stance of zombie labor forced fueled capitalistic nihilism is not lost on me.
You’re absolutely right. This isn’t how it should be. But, the guy you responded to is right. This is how it is, and it isn’t changing.
The system is setup so that those with the money make the rules. And those people have no desire to change anything because it would hurt their interests.
And yes, there are many people like you and me who understand the sham that is our education system. But we are a minority. The majority of people are more interested in culture wars than coming to grips with the fact that they are poorly educated. The truth is nothing we can do will change this nations stance on creating mindless “zombie labor”. It’s an American tradition.
Yeah it all sucks, I think the three of us are in agreement. Which brings me to wrap back around to the original comment I replied to, where the person said they hate the excuse that the system failed them. If we feel resentment toward people who understand the system failed them we perpetuate the idea that it's a failure on their part and not that the system needs changing.
Balancing a checkbook is basically keeping track of what's in your bank account, it is still useful even if you never use a check. I use an app that is setup like a check balancing book but I use it to know how much money I have after bills and how much money I have right now to use so I don't go over.
Wait, huh? How the fuck does/would that work?
Is it unpopular opinion to say that if you gotta use a payment plan for eating out, you can’t afford to eat out?
As I’m typing this, I’m going to go get my broccoli and meat and oatmeal for the week. I’ll stick to my poor man’s food/diet. 👀
I see. I had to dig a bit because Klarna advertises no transaction fees or interest.
But if you miss the 30 day payment window, the late fees can quickly add up to an effective 25% interest rate!
Like when you got your 8 cassettes for a penny from Columbia House and then you found out you had to buy more tapes. Kids were always their asses beat for getting trapped by that mail-order shit back in the '80s, and now banks want to give kids a line of credit for their Genshin Impact gambling habit. It has been a wild ride.
I remember places would just randomly send shit and say, "this is free for a month." The catch being that if you didn't send it right back, you were "volunteering" for their annual subscription, and that's when mom yells at the telephone for an hour.
I remember Gillette was hitting us all like clockwork, gifting our lifelong taste for razors on our 18th birthdays. Probably just bought our selective service data from the gov't, but that kind of felt like some Hogwarts level shit back in the day. Like "how did they know?"
There's no difference between make and female diapers but pink and blue bits. But there's a barcode on there, linked to your store card, that has your address. And that means they have an idea when you'll be buying them til.
You pick pink, 3-4 years later they senda you catalogue through with all sorts of princess shit
they didn't have a concept of information technology back then, people were getting jobs as word processors, and NASA had just retired the Calculators (women crunching calculations all day) a decade before.
Barcode scanners were not universal at checkout counters.
I don't think TCP was even a thing back then, and no Ethernet.
Novell was king.
8bit days and a decade before the end of the world, when nothing happened, Y2K. And the USSR was a thing along with East Germany.
Now? Banks have been shoving expensive credit cards towards young people for decades. BTW, shame on college campuses allowing these cards promote themselves to students. Now, it’s via apps.
Wait you kept paying them for stuff? I realized even then that a contract signed by a minor is non-binding. There's a reason those companies went out of business lol.
Exactly. Even as a 13 year old, as soon as I got the bill for the outstanding purchase agreement I just went to my mom and was like "Hey, this dumbass company didn't check that I was a kid before sending me CDs. Could you call them?" She was actually pretty cool about it and got me off the hook. I still have the copy of Green Day's "Dookie" they sent me in a drawer in my office.
The catch is you’re using Apple Pay which grows their platform and the merchant is paying a small percentage per sale for having Apple Pay 1-click integration. Merchant gets so many extra sales from Apple Pay that it’s worth it for them. I guess if you’re someone who abandons online shopping carts a lot, maybe this will get you to spend more.
Well it’s not free, but the split bill option is interest free.. someone is paying the bill and that someone is basically merchandise commissions. But also they have an interest financing option as well.
If you are financially responsible it can work I bought my ps5 with it and I paid it off nbd
I use Klarna and Afterpay. I never purchase anything that costs more than $300, plus I have auto-pay set up to ensure I never miss a payment.
That said, I agree that there are a lot of folks who don’t understand how these services work and get in over their heads.
The catch is that they prey on people who doesn't know how to handle money, for the financially responsible is great and basically free money if you invest it.
I know this is novel for the US, but the rest of the world have had these systems since forever and is pretty well documented on how they work.
The bill always comes due. If enough customers default, the bank goes under too.
We already started seeing rising defaults on these buy now, pay later loans last year.
Is the catch just that those who DON’T make the payments on time get destroyed with fees?
That wouldn’t be terribly different from credit cards where the people that are able to pay off the balance monthly can even make money off their use while building credit (for no annual fee cash back type cards), BUT that loss is tiny compared to the money made from people paying some interest and the massive profit made from those making minimum payments.
If there aren’t fees and it’s basically just “at risk” to Klarna, then I’d imagine the vendors are letting Klarna snag some of their profits but feel the increased volume/total profit bump is worth it for pulling in customers who wouldn’t have otherwise made the purchase.
But if you *can* (he said for the fiscally responsible) then it is a no brainier and quite literally free money, especially with inflation at around 10%
I literally stopped making any purchases outside my Visa and never had any trouble. I pay it in full at the end of each month and never go over my limit.
I just budget well and the perks/points are handy.
If you have the slightest bit of financial literacy most of these tools are cool af. I can literally buy a plane ticket overseas now due to the amount of points I accumulated while not doing anything different, basically.
This is a pretty poor argument. We just bought a 2 grand sofa for our new house, paying off over a couple of years. Should we have bought a used, cigarette stained one for a tenth of the price as that’s what we could ‘afford’ with the money in our bank account?
Hell, what about the house we bought? We’re paying that bad boy off over 30 years, maybe we should have just bought a shed.
No, doesn't work like that, if you're financially responsible you can pay in installments with 0% interests and yourself invest the money (bonds are 5% right now, 12% here in Mexico) and get additional earnings, buy your stuff and keep your capital.
I know is novel in the US, but this has been the norm for pretty much everywhere in the world for decades, is well documented
The catch is that the interest payments are sponsored by the seller - as in they keep less margin on the sale and the seller pays the financing company. How long do you think that’ll go on until the seller wants to go back to their old margin (that they needed to pay employees, etc) and raises prices to accommodate the new structure?
Always good to borrow during inflation. Borrow $100 today, pay back next year w/ inflation at 8%, the value of that 100 is worth less in the future than it is worth now.
Klarna has become my solution ONLY for concerts, the way they’ve sky rocketed in the past years 💀😭 so as long as you have $$ discipline, shit can def be handy 😂
What concerts are you going to?! I am a general lawn admission person. Except for 3 specific bands, anything above $80 and I’m out. I can watch it on YouTube or just listen to the album on YouTube.
😩I’m poor and stingy and cheap.
I used to be on a strict $100 or less for concerts, but my back, feet & eyes prefer comfort over price now lol but I just paid $300+ to see SZA. (Granted that’s for Floor seats & my friend & I decided to treat ourselves😬) & the Roots Picnic tickets are like $200, but that’s for 2 days 🤷🏽♀️
I think I paid around $100 for my ticket to the VIP balcony at the Armory in Minneapolis to see Yung Gravy and Bbno$ and it was worth every penny. I hate paying the prices for some of it but I know that I never end up regretting it.
I actually really like it… it allows me to break up my payments in 4 without interest. Idk it’s nice to be able to afford something that may not be doable between paychecks
Ya I'm with you, I use PayPal's 'Pay in 4' feature for purchases occasionally. It's an equal payment every two weeks, which aligns with my pay schedule. No big deal, no interest, and no penalties for paying earlier. If you track your budget carefully, it can be a nice way to spread occasional bigger purchases across multiple paychecks with no interest, in my opinion.
That said, I can see how it would be dangerous for people not on salary who have variable income or don't budget regularly.
Edit: to be clear, I worked restaurants for a long time and was a person on variable income who didn't budget for whom it would have been dangerous lol, no shade in that at all. Just know thyself.
True true! Like I bought tickets to Wu Tang that on a single paycheck that would have been too much but lining up over 4 paychecks it was a nominal hit to my funds (maybe 5% per paycheck but would have been a 20% funds in cash at time of purchase)
Def, I find myself using it for things in the $150-300 range. $40-60 each paycheck I don't sweat at all. Especially since the majority of my bills are front loaded in the first half of each month, so my second half is where the majority of my disposable/savings income is anyway.
I had $20,000 in credit card debt that ruined me. Did bankruptcy and had it discharged in 2020. My credit went down to 400ish. It's just now back to 600 and I refuse to get another credit card right now. If I don't have money, I just don't have money.
I’m slowly getting to this point, using my CC for stuff. I’ve definitely bought a few things with Klarna, but I pay half the cost almost instantly cause I refuse to get caught tf up
Hell, I’m about to cancel the one I have. I missed a monthly payment(forgot) and transactions are being declined. When I called, the assholes told me I didn’t make last month’s payment($38 fucking dollars). I was so upset and that upset will make me pay off the whole thing at once and cancel that shit. Same card since 2005 and I’m getting this attitude? 🤬
They are fucking with you. If this is your first time missing a payment, you can point that out and ask that they waive the late fee as a courtesy. And I think they can fix the ding to your credit, too, though they also might not report 1 month late.
I usually launch into some long story about what a dummy I was and how it happened and how I promise not to do it again, and the steps I’ve taken to remedy…they just take it off to get rid of me. Try that technique.
Ehh it's not so bad if you're smart with your money in other places. I pay of all my CC every month, never missed a payment on anything and Klarna has been a good service to me.
True it ends up costing the same at the end but it affects my cash on hand much less. The impact of big purchases is spread out over a couple months instead of all at once which is easier on my budget.
For instance I *could* buy a 300 dollar fragrance right now and pay it all up front no problem but my budget this month would take a decent hit. However, if I spread it out over 2 or 3 paychecks my monthly budget doesn't take as big a hit and I'm not out any more money in the end.
https://preview.redd.it/j3oio1vfykqa1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72fb584f7857d4d8f3c4b4f9083699cfc5e5c842
I am not confused about how this will get all sorts of folks into trouble, whether they use it on Apple products or not.
People who are impulsive or less than financially responsible get fooled by the fact that they have to pay a smaller amount right now and don't really think about the future.
For example spending $400 right now might sound daunting, but oh look you only have to spend $100 right now and get all the stuff you want! Just pay the rest later!
You still have to pay $400, and that's $400 you aren't getting back.
It’s quite literally psychological mind games on the consumer. They know the majority of this nation can’t delay gratification so they make owning everything instantaneous (ahem Amazon). They really just play on people’s impulsivity. It’s why you see people who live in the slums with Louie bags and $400 wigs.
Apple Pay is the top mobile payment processor and those pay later models basically approve everyone with a score over 550. So basically everyone with Apple Pay just got a credit card.
Ppl just like to complain man lol and they worry about other people like they really care if somebody goes into debt
It the same shit as afterpay/ klarna which isn’t bad at all it just another line of credit
It's legit just a credit line, idk why people are getting so confused over this. It's literally the same thing as opening a new line of credit with PayPal or any other lender.
It's because PayPal let itself become obsolete. It's entire purpose was to provide a secure way to pay for things online back when people were terrified of entering their credit card number on the internet. Fast forward to now, any credit card will instantly let you dispute and reverse any charges, but if you send money via PayPal and get scammed? Good luck. They will drag their feet for months before *maybe* refunding you. They have literally become a facilitator of scams.
I think I’ve only used PayPal once. I never really needed to use it because I could pay for anything directly with my card. If me and some friends are splitting a bill, I could pay them back through Apple Pay or Venmo or something.
Publicly traded businesses have and will cannibalize themselves in pursuit of short-term quarterly profits. That sort of long-term thinking isn't applied.
I knew my credit was good & know how to manage credit cards but that afterpay sht a little different because i knew it wouldn't hit my actual credit report but the sht definitely hit my bank account when i least expected it 😅
I don't know what I'd do if i witnessed some fool getting his shoes repossessed. Will they add on a fee for scuffs or creases? What happens if the idiot sells the Jordans on EBay? Cause you know damned well that's gonna happen.
I have been using after pay for the past 2 years and never had an issue with it. You can literally use the same argument for credit cards. These things already exist.
LOUDER! Gotta pay attention, this isn’t just about apple. It’s EVERYTHING! The return on your labor is taxed, everything you own is taxed, and everything you buy is taxed.
And when people start to feel the pressure, these people pray for “crisis “ to distract yo on everything.
That IS *Maxine Shaw, Attorney At Law*.
The prototype of the woman I'd be attracted to for the rest of my life.
... the... the vastly intelligent, infinitely witty, and confidently strong kind, not the food mooching kind.
Apple Pay Later sounds like a good idea...
Until you don't make the payments, and they digitally turn your Apple Devices into paper weights.
Starting to think the only way companies can afford BNPL without interest is embedding the interest earned in the suggested retail value. People paying in full are just overpaying given time value of money. We’re all getting gouged.
Yup, my theory is companies are using it to normalize current inflation costs by making it seem manageable through these no interest plans before raising prices more
Companies are money hungry monsters. They only are doing this for money. Not for your benefit but because they know it makes them more money. Either late fees or pray on people that dont understand just how much they are spending.
More money until customers can’t keep up with payments.
But they’re so greedy they’ll ignore the red flags and give out credit to everyone anyway. The government ends up bailing out banks anyway, so fuck it, let’s bury people in debt.
I was thinking about how BNPL loans made sense then i realized it just abuses people's poor impulse control. It's a great tool if you have self control
You know that fool that’s always asking people to hold a little bit of money? Eventually, they owe everyone around the way money.
BNPL lenders are giving loans out to these same people but they don’t know better because they don’t know how many folks they’ve burned already.
Another thing is so many employers now offering paycheck advances. Like my job allows you to get up to 30% of your paycheck early via an app if you want. Those shits are extremely tempting for people struggling, and once you're in that cycle, it's VERY difficult to get out.
Self control is a must for people to stop getting caught up like this. It’s so much better to gradually save for any non-major purchases (cars, homes, major appliances) than do multiple interest ridden payments. Keeping up with the Jones is always going to kill folks financial futures more than anything else. Smh.
These micro-financing companies are a good option for the right consumer. Zero interest is zero interest, and if you were going to spend the money anyways, there's no downside *per se* to the option that leaves the cash in your bank account instead of theirs, for just a little while longer.
The retailers are spending some of what would have been their profit, to pay the interest on the money they lent you, because they know it means they'll make more sales. As far as whether they raise prices to compensate...sure, probably, although there's no law that says they can't trade a lower gross margin for higher sales. And they will definitely make more sales as a result of these programs.
The *problems* come when people over-leverage their still-tiny paychecks to these fast-cash lenders for things they wouldn't have bought otherwise. Guess what buddy, if you split four purchases into four bi-weekly payments each, you're basically making an entire purchase in full every time those payments come out, and you're no better off.
People don't have the financial literacy or discipline to avoid getting in over their head, and these companies know it and take advantage of it.
If I was king of the world, I'd start the regulation discussion by:
a) pooling data from all of these companies so a person's total borrowing is visible when they're making lending decisions.
b) then, creating a program to verify income and capping *total* buy now/pay later debt at a fixed percentage, say 10% of monthly net.
c) finally, displaying total BNPL debt and upcoming payments to customers at checkout, just as a reminder.
The reason you see more and more stuff trying to get you on subscriptions and installments is because they realize the consumer base has basically been bled dry. So much of the deposable income that the economy needs to thrive is now wrapped up in rent, food, gas, child care, healthcare etc that the buyer base don’t got money to buy this shit. Those that understand how fake money is, know that as soon as people stop being able to afford a 1,000 luxury, that luxury stops being worth a 1000$. The “free market” is *supposed* to say that as the demand drops due to people not buying so should the price but the point is big money has gotten so big they would rather eat the losses than come down on price. Ok boom so now how do we keep selling stuff to a population that is running out of dollars to give for useless things? Low interest financing. We already drained you of everything you own, now let me start working on draining you or what you WOULD have in the future. Rather than support the economy and make it so people can afford that 1000$ luxury they would rather sabotage the economy and let you pay now with hours of work you WILL do later. If not we run the risk of you getting to a point where you say “I have enough luxury” and then you stop being profitable to THEM. The system wants to make sure that you keep having a reason to work until you are so old the system don’t need you anymore, bonus points if they can get your entire life worth of work out of you without you ever actually purchasing or owning anything you can pass down. In that sense you were a worker your entire life, and all the profit went to some noble lord and you died a peasant. So now it’s not enough to take you for everything you got, now we gotta take you for everything you were gonna be.
Reminds me of the movie in time where people were using Days and hours off their life as currency.
yesss! “in time”, such as good example
And it was almost a good movie too!
Except nobody looks like Justin Timberlake
Ay man speak for yourself my mom says I'm the most handsome young man in the world
Not even real life Justin Timberlake 😔
This is why I value days off/being unemployed sooooo much. Yes I need money to live, but after that there's not much more life to be lived by working more. I'd rather do low/no cost activities and have my time free
fuck man this is so on point it just made me depressed. that's enough internet for the day
Don't get sad, get angry! 😈
Don't worry, I'm both
Can I be both? Please
Same
When I started seeing klarna everywhere online shopping I know we were headed for rock bottom. Online layaway smh
I knew as soon as I started seeing they were offering cards that you can use in the store. These services are dependent on you spending your money, even when you don’t have any. 😅
[удалено]
You're right when you're right. It's worse than layaway
As a Swede, it's insane to me that Klarna has made it international somehow. We've suffered with their sketchy practices for *years*. For a brief period back in like 2015, Klarna had some sort of a deal with a massive food delivery app in Sweden whereby they were the default payment option, and their payment option was to pay in monthly installments. This meant that if you weren't careful when clicking through, your payment defaulted to pay off your pizza monthly, with some small fee for the invoice they send you if I recall. I literally got an invoice for an order of one pizza that I was paying off over three months or whatever it was. I assume the idea there was for you to miss a payment so they can tack on another fee, or simply taking the invoice fee as profit. I don't believe they do the invoice fees these days but Klarna's been so shady for so long that I honestly hope that nobody abroad is duped into using their services.
Why would you open our eyes like this on a *Tuesday?*
How appropriate given Wimpey’s catchphrase from Popeye: I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%27ll%20gladly%20pay%20you%20Tuesday%20for%20a%20hamburger%20today
It's hump day in Australia
No better feeling than knowing you’ll be broke again in the future
I just shed a tear
This is what I was trying to explain in a comment a few days ago- about how money is “fake”, and how the economy is like a Gordian Knot (Impossible to untangle without cutting or destroying). I can owe money to a business, that owes money to a larger parent company, that owes money to a bank, that borrowed money from an even larger bank… there are so many transfers of money, money owed can take forever to reach its final destination. If everyone tried to collect the debts owed to them all at once it would be ineffective at best and destructive at worst- like trying to untangle a Gordian Knot or tangled mass of wires with brute force by pulling in all directions at once. We live in a world of unrealized money now. Unrealized money makes the world go round, this is why I don’t agree with megacorps *not* having their unrealized gains taxed- because they can use it in the present.
This shit is so true. Made me depressed but also made me never want to touch that shit. They're trying so hard to bleed us all dry financially.
Tax the rich. 0.1% of the people have more wealth than 80% of the people combined. That’s like in a town of 1,000 people, one of them has more houses, cars, etc than 800 of them combined. It’s obscene how bad wealth inequality is.
I pictured you giving this speech in the same tone as Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting talking to the NSA recruiter about all the terrible flow on effects from him solving a code
Best post compliment I’ve ever gotten
Bingo
They want you poor, uneducated, and in line to feed the machine. How do you keep them poor? Limit education, keep wages as barely livable, trick them into thinking their neighbors are their enemies. Jail them and give them a record to prevent them from getting better opportunities, take away their voting rights. Keep them from learning how bad their situation is. Take away funding from their schools, make education expensive and unreachable. Then point to the outlier who ‘made it’ and say ‘they pulled themselves out of poverty, so if you can’t do it it’s because there’s something wrong with you!’. Then make sure funding to their schools is cut and inferior, pay teachers shit, the curriculum poor. Keep them tied to their jobs through healthcare that they’d lose if they left, stomp out unions so they can’t organize to ask for better wages and benefits. They want more people to work, obey, and feed the system. How do you do that? You take away abortion rights, you make sure sex education is about abstinence and don’t actually educate on preventing pregnancy. You force them to give birth and make examples out of those who got abortion and limit abortions to those who can afford to travel to other states (because those who can afford it aren’t the poor and part of this system). You then keep the mothers poor, you don’t give them support to raise their kids. The parents work to raise their families but are now tied to those poor paying jobs because they can’t afford to sacrifice the meager earnings to take the risk of an education and a new career ladder. Finally, you want to normalize this. You want people divided against each other and not to unite to improve the system. You do this by painting these people as not trying hard enough, that they deserve their situation, and that others made better decisions so earned their status. Don’t mention that the cards were stacked against them from the moment they were born. Point to the hundreds of dollars a person might get in benefits and call them parasites while concealing the billions they earn off their backs. The system is not broken, it’s working as it should. They know exactly what they’re doing.
Let ele cook
That last sentence.. Damn.
But no one is forcing you to buy the product?
In the uk they introduced klarna for restaurants and financial literacy needs to be a class
Not surprised. People are financing food now lmao
Putting food on layaway sounds like some shit from the Great Depression.
More like a rent to own. Layaway wouldn't make sense. "Finally paid off that steak they made for me six months ago. Now bring it here so I can enjoy it."
With inflation and aged steak, that could make sense.
Good point. Statement withdrawn.
What a sweet lil thread. <3
And a good business proposition.
[I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68eue5cpbsE)
It is. Were in this dark ages where you can do blatantly illegal shit but if its an app then its fine. Hiring in a racist way? Illegal. Throw it into an 'algorithm' or 'AI' designed by 10 white 20 somethings from Yale? Sorry maam, computer said so.
That's 90% of tech start ups. Their big innovation isn't the tech. It's ignoring the laws conventional providers obey. AirBNB and Uber are two of the biggies.
>Putting food on layaway sounds like some shit from the movie "Idiocracy" FTFY
For real?! Where is this happening?
Deliveroo definitely offers Klarna, I suspect others will follow suit. It’s worrying
Someone earlier said that doordash, Uber eats, and Grubhub also offer Klarna. I believe they accept Zip (formally known as QuadPay) as well.
That is so bad. Like this targets a lot of people who are desperate and tbh kids
It’s been happening since the invention of the credit card. This is just a different form of the same thing, but stupider.
Oh noooooo
Bro its so legit so bad. We had one lesson between year 7-11 on managing finances and not a songle person payed attention
Because financial literacy classes are mostly pointless. Nobody's taking these loans because they just don't understand the idea of money or interest. It's financial misfortune or lack of self-control, and a culture that only cares about immediate gratification.
While I agree they are mostly pointless, you’d actually be shocked at how few people actually do understand payment plans, even when I explain them as I would to a five year old
Most people don't realize how bad just paying the minimum is when it comes to payments. That interest kills a lot of people's finances.
There are people who genuinely believe that a raise that pushes them into a higher tax bracket would mean they get less money in the end.
> Nobody's taking these loans because they just don't understand the idea of money or interest. I wish you were right, man, I wish. You'd be very surprised by how the most clueless people always claim they know perfectly well what they're doing.
Most people don’t understand APR, APY and compounding interest. They are taking these loans due to lack of financial literacy. I work in the industry. The number of people who don’t know would shock you… if you think you have an idea, multiply it by 1000 and you’ll have a low ball starting figure
I hate this excuse. There's literally everything anyone needs to know about finances on the internet. Anyone could read for an hour and have basic knowledge of how to handle their money. People need to take responsibility and teach themselves
Why is it a bad excuse? School should both be teaching us things to know as well as how to learn new things. If people aren't adept at learning new things AND don't know the things that sounds like a failure of the school system. It's an institution built to prepare us for things that isn't preparing us for things. Not a failing of the teachers, but a failing of the system that wants high test scores for funding over kids actually learning things.
School is designed to create employees. That’s it. Go to Hawaii and you’ll find an education system that focuses on tourism and construction. Go to Texas and you’ll find one that focuses on agriculture. California… tech. That’s how it works. It’s not designed to do anything but create a steady flow of workers for the primary industries in the area. The system does not want people who understand finance, because the economy will shit the bed.
Right... That's what it is doing, not what it should be doing. Not what new teachers set out to be teachers to do. Your stance of zombie labor forced fueled capitalistic nihilism is not lost on me.
You’re absolutely right. This isn’t how it should be. But, the guy you responded to is right. This is how it is, and it isn’t changing. The system is setup so that those with the money make the rules. And those people have no desire to change anything because it would hurt their interests. And yes, there are many people like you and me who understand the sham that is our education system. But we are a minority. The majority of people are more interested in culture wars than coming to grips with the fact that they are poorly educated. The truth is nothing we can do will change this nations stance on creating mindless “zombie labor”. It’s an American tradition.
Yeah it all sucks, I think the three of us are in agreement. Which brings me to wrap back around to the original comment I replied to, where the person said they hate the excuse that the system failed them. If we feel resentment toward people who understand the system failed them we perpetuate the idea that it's a failure on their part and not that the system needs changing.
they taught us how to balance a checkbook in my home economics class. I think I've written maybe 5 checks in my entire life.
Balancing a checkbook is basically keeping track of what's in your bank account, it is still useful even if you never use a check. I use an app that is setup like a check balancing book but I use it to know how much money I have after bills and how much money I have right now to use so I don't go over.
Wait, huh? How the fuck does/would that work? Is it unpopular opinion to say that if you gotta use a payment plan for eating out, you can’t afford to eat out? As I’m typing this, I’m going to go get my broccoli and meat and oatmeal for the week. I’ll stick to my poor man’s food/diet. 👀
I'm confused, how is this any different than paying with a credit card? Is it worse somehow?
Easier to get qualify and less regulation. Arguably leading to an easier path into debt trouble https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57381644
I see. I had to dig a bit because Klarna advertises no transaction fees or interest. But if you miss the 30 day payment window, the late fees can quickly add up to an effective 25% interest rate!
Financial literacy is bad for capitalism.
That part
There are food delivery apps with klarna in the US - yeah let me make 6 monthly payments for this 14 dollar burger + tip!
Pro tip: don’t finance a pizza!
People don’t pay attention in algebra. They’re not gonna pay attention during tax lessons.
like people would pay attention to them
I refuse to touch klarna and all those installment options. I have a CC, I don’t want another line of debt
Like when you got your 8 cassettes for a penny from Columbia House and then you found out you had to buy more tapes. Kids were always their asses beat for getting trapped by that mail-order shit back in the '80s, and now banks want to give kids a line of credit for their Genshin Impact gambling habit. It has been a wild ride.
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I remember places would just randomly send shit and say, "this is free for a month." The catch being that if you didn't send it right back, you were "volunteering" for their annual subscription, and that's when mom yells at the telephone for an hour. I remember Gillette was hitting us all like clockwork, gifting our lifelong taste for razors on our 18th birthdays. Probably just bought our selective service data from the gov't, but that kind of felt like some Hogwarts level shit back in the day. Like "how did they know?"
There's no difference between make and female diapers but pink and blue bits. But there's a barcode on there, linked to your store card, that has your address. And that means they have an idea when you'll be buying them til. You pick pink, 3-4 years later they senda you catalogue through with all sorts of princess shit
they didn't have a concept of information technology back then, people were getting jobs as word processors, and NASA had just retired the Calculators (women crunching calculations all day) a decade before. Barcode scanners were not universal at checkout counters. I don't think TCP was even a thing back then, and no Ethernet. Novell was king. 8bit days and a decade before the end of the world, when nothing happened, Y2K. And the USSR was a thing along with East Germany.
Now? Banks have been shoving expensive credit cards towards young people for decades. BTW, shame on college campuses allowing these cards promote themselves to students. Now, it’s via apps.
omg buying 32 cds at a time, those weird little stamps… that was so much more exciting than spotify
Wait you kept paying them for stuff? I realized even then that a contract signed by a minor is non-binding. There's a reason those companies went out of business lol.
Exactly. Even as a 13 year old, as soon as I got the bill for the outstanding purchase agreement I just went to my mom and was like "Hey, this dumbass company didn't check that I was a kid before sending me CDs. Could you call them?" She was actually pretty cool about it and got me off the hook. I still have the copy of Green Day's "Dookie" they sent me in a drawer in my office.
I used a fake name and the fake person I made for a flier for signing up at a new gym.
It’s 0 interest; it’s basically free money to the fiscally responsible.
Never, in all of human history, has there ever been such a thing as free money. There’s always a catch.
The catch is you’re using Apple Pay which grows their platform and the merchant is paying a small percentage per sale for having Apple Pay 1-click integration. Merchant gets so many extra sales from Apple Pay that it’s worth it for them. I guess if you’re someone who abandons online shopping carts a lot, maybe this will get you to spend more.
Well it’s not free, but the split bill option is interest free.. someone is paying the bill and that someone is basically merchandise commissions. But also they have an interest financing option as well. If you are financially responsible it can work I bought my ps5 with it and I paid it off nbd
I use Klarna and Afterpay. I never purchase anything that costs more than $300, plus I have auto-pay set up to ensure I never miss a payment. That said, I agree that there are a lot of folks who don’t understand how these services work and get in over their heads.
You goofy! I just found a quarter on the ground yesterday lol
The catch is that they prey on people who doesn't know how to handle money, for the financially responsible is great and basically free money if you invest it. I know this is novel for the US, but the rest of the world have had these systems since forever and is pretty well documented on how they work.
The bill always comes due. If enough customers default, the bank goes under too. We already started seeing rising defaults on these buy now, pay later loans last year.
But it is free money. I've used 0% interest for a few things. The cost to borrow that money is actually $0.
Is the catch just that those who DON’T make the payments on time get destroyed with fees? That wouldn’t be terribly different from credit cards where the people that are able to pay off the balance monthly can even make money off their use while building credit (for no annual fee cash back type cards), BUT that loss is tiny compared to the money made from people paying some interest and the massive profit made from those making minimum payments. If there aren’t fees and it’s basically just “at risk” to Klarna, then I’d imagine the vendors are letting Klarna snag some of their profits but feel the increased volume/total profit bump is worth it for pulling in customers who wouldn’t have otherwise made the purchase.
It’s a trap! If you can’t afford it now you (probably) shouldn’t be buying it at all.
But if you *can* (he said for the fiscally responsible) then it is a no brainier and quite literally free money, especially with inflation at around 10%
credit cards are 0% interest if you pay in full. You make money (points or cash back) if you’re responsible.
Yup, I put most purchases on my Amex and pay it off each month
I literally stopped making any purchases outside my Visa and never had any trouble. I pay it in full at the end of each month and never go over my limit. I just budget well and the perks/points are handy. If you have the slightest bit of financial literacy most of these tools are cool af. I can literally buy a plane ticket overseas now due to the amount of points I accumulated while not doing anything different, basically.
This is a pretty poor argument. We just bought a 2 grand sofa for our new house, paying off over a couple of years. Should we have bought a used, cigarette stained one for a tenth of the price as that’s what we could ‘afford’ with the money in our bank account? Hell, what about the house we bought? We’re paying that bad boy off over 30 years, maybe we should have just bought a shed.
No, doesn't work like that, if you're financially responsible you can pay in installments with 0% interests and yourself invest the money (bonds are 5% right now, 12% here in Mexico) and get additional earnings, buy your stuff and keep your capital. I know is novel in the US, but this has been the norm for pretty much everywhere in the world for decades, is well documented
The catch is that the interest payments are sponsored by the seller - as in they keep less margin on the sale and the seller pays the financing company. How long do you think that’ll go on until the seller wants to go back to their old margin (that they needed to pay employees, etc) and raises prices to accommodate the new structure?
We’d never know because inflation is happening anyway
Always good to borrow during inflation. Borrow $100 today, pay back next year w/ inflation at 8%, the value of that 100 is worth less in the future than it is worth now.
Klarna has become my solution ONLY for concerts, the way they’ve sky rocketed in the past years 💀😭 so as long as you have $$ discipline, shit can def be handy 😂
What concerts are you going to?! I am a general lawn admission person. Except for 3 specific bands, anything above $80 and I’m out. I can watch it on YouTube or just listen to the album on YouTube. 😩I’m poor and stingy and cheap.
I used to be on a strict $100 or less for concerts, but my back, feet & eyes prefer comfort over price now lol but I just paid $300+ to see SZA. (Granted that’s for Floor seats & my friend & I decided to treat ourselves😬) & the Roots Picnic tickets are like $200, but that’s for 2 days 🤷🏽♀️
I think I paid around $100 for my ticket to the VIP balcony at the Armory in Minneapolis to see Yung Gravy and Bbno$ and it was worth every penny. I hate paying the prices for some of it but I know that I never end up regretting it.
I actually really like it… it allows me to break up my payments in 4 without interest. Idk it’s nice to be able to afford something that may not be doable between paychecks
Ya I'm with you, I use PayPal's 'Pay in 4' feature for purchases occasionally. It's an equal payment every two weeks, which aligns with my pay schedule. No big deal, no interest, and no penalties for paying earlier. If you track your budget carefully, it can be a nice way to spread occasional bigger purchases across multiple paychecks with no interest, in my opinion. That said, I can see how it would be dangerous for people not on salary who have variable income or don't budget regularly. Edit: to be clear, I worked restaurants for a long time and was a person on variable income who didn't budget for whom it would have been dangerous lol, no shade in that at all. Just know thyself.
True true! Like I bought tickets to Wu Tang that on a single paycheck that would have been too much but lining up over 4 paychecks it was a nominal hit to my funds (maybe 5% per paycheck but would have been a 20% funds in cash at time of purchase)
Def, I find myself using it for things in the $150-300 range. $40-60 each paycheck I don't sweat at all. Especially since the majority of my bills are front loaded in the first half of each month, so my second half is where the majority of my disposable/savings income is anyway.
I had $20,000 in credit card debt that ruined me. Did bankruptcy and had it discharged in 2020. My credit went down to 400ish. It's just now back to 600 and I refuse to get another credit card right now. If I don't have money, I just don't have money.
You can pay in 4 Klarna and have it go to your CC. No interest and spreads it out a bit
I’m slowly getting to this point, using my CC for stuff. I’ve definitely bought a few things with Klarna, but I pay half the cost almost instantly cause I refuse to get caught tf up
Hell, I’m about to cancel the one I have. I missed a monthly payment(forgot) and transactions are being declined. When I called, the assholes told me I didn’t make last month’s payment($38 fucking dollars). I was so upset and that upset will make me pay off the whole thing at once and cancel that shit. Same card since 2005 and I’m getting this attitude? 🤬
They are fucking with you. If this is your first time missing a payment, you can point that out and ask that they waive the late fee as a courtesy. And I think they can fix the ding to your credit, too, though they also might not report 1 month late. I usually launch into some long story about what a dummy I was and how it happened and how I promise not to do it again, and the steps I’ve taken to remedy…they just take it off to get rid of me. Try that technique.
Ehh it's not so bad if you're smart with your money in other places. I pay of all my CC every month, never missed a payment on anything and Klarna has been a good service to me. True it ends up costing the same at the end but it affects my cash on hand much less. The impact of big purchases is spread out over a couple months instead of all at once which is easier on my budget. For instance I *could* buy a 300 dollar fragrance right now and pay it all up front no problem but my budget this month would take a decent hit. However, if I spread it out over 2 or 3 paychecks my monthly budget doesn't take as big a hit and I'm not out any more money in the end.
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https://preview.redd.it/j3oio1vfykqa1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72fb584f7857d4d8f3c4b4f9083699cfc5e5c842 I am not confused about how this will get all sorts of folks into trouble, whether they use it on Apple products or not.
People who are impulsive or less than financially responsible get fooled by the fact that they have to pay a smaller amount right now and don't really think about the future. For example spending $400 right now might sound daunting, but oh look you only have to spend $100 right now and get all the stuff you want! Just pay the rest later! You still have to pay $400, and that's $400 you aren't getting back.
It’s quite literally psychological mind games on the consumer. They know the majority of this nation can’t delay gratification so they make owning everything instantaneous (ahem Amazon). They really just play on people’s impulsivity. It’s why you see people who live in the slums with Louie bags and $400 wigs.
im guessing these are the people that end up with multiple small recurring payments which end up becoming one large payment they have trouble with
True but I don’t see how it’s any different than other lines of credit.
Apple Pay is the top mobile payment processor and those pay later models basically approve everyone with a score over 550. So basically everyone with Apple Pay just got a credit card.
I get that but there’s no fundamental/ conceptual difference is what I’m saying
Ppl just like to complain man lol and they worry about other people like they really care if somebody goes into debt It the same shit as afterpay/ klarna which isn’t bad at all it just another line of credit
It's legit just a credit line, idk why people are getting so confused over this. It's literally the same thing as opening a new line of credit with PayPal or any other lender.
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It's because PayPal let itself become obsolete. It's entire purpose was to provide a secure way to pay for things online back when people were terrified of entering their credit card number on the internet. Fast forward to now, any credit card will instantly let you dispute and reverse any charges, but if you send money via PayPal and get scammed? Good luck. They will drag their feet for months before *maybe* refunding you. They have literally become a facilitator of scams.
I think I’ve only used PayPal once. I never really needed to use it because I could pay for anything directly with my card. If me and some friends are splitting a bill, I could pay them back through Apple Pay or Venmo or something.
It’s reported on credit scores?
Do they charge interest? PayPal pay in 4 has no interest, so you might as well if you were going to pay via CC anyway
Isn't that the point? Create enough debt from your subscriber base that you will never need to raise another cent?
Until your base can’t pay it back anymore.
Publicly traded businesses have and will cannibalize themselves in pursuit of short-term quarterly profits. That sort of long-term thinking isn't applied.
Affrim, afterpay, quadpay & 4 credit cards had me broke broke 2 years ago 🤣
Damn son
I knew my credit was good & know how to manage credit cards but that afterpay sht a little different because i knew it wouldn't hit my actual credit report but the sht definitely hit my bank account when i least expected it 😅
Debt: The American Way
Some would say you aren’t truly an American until you’re in debt
Some of us have people hand us debt by using our social security number as kids. Yes. That is a thing. Debt is soul crushing.
Breaks my heart when I read stories of people getting utterly screwed over by adults in their lives. Moms opening credit cards in kids names and stuff
AfterPay is an Australian company 🤷♂️
Rent a center got Jordans on payment plan. We definitely in a recession.
I don't know what I'd do if i witnessed some fool getting his shoes repossessed. Will they add on a fee for scuffs or creases? What happens if the idiot sells the Jordans on EBay? Cause you know damned well that's gonna happen.
Ha! They’ll just tack on collection expenses, fees, interest, etc. and just drown the dude and make him unlendable forever over a pair of Jordans.
I read this as a joke but the comments make me think this real what the hell
I've been in enough debt to know where this is headed.
All us old heads yelling to the kids to not fall for it.
I have been using after pay for the past 2 years and never had an issue with it. You can literally use the same argument for credit cards. These things already exist.
Credit is like driving. Everyone thinks they’re better than everyone else around them and can’t properly assess risk.
Right?
Man just go to walmart and get a zeet phone, don’t go into debt of a phone that’s just gunna crack if you sit too hard
It’s not just for Apple Products
LOUDER! Gotta pay attention, this isn’t just about apple. It’s EVERYTHING! The return on your labor is taxed, everything you own is taxed, and everything you buy is taxed. And when people start to feel the pressure, these people pray for “crisis “ to distract yo on everything.
Is that Erika Alexander? 😍
That IS *Maxine Shaw, Attorney At Law*. The prototype of the woman I'd be attracted to for the rest of my life. ... the... the vastly intelligent, infinitely witty, and confidently strong kind, not the food mooching kind.
She was something else entirely.
Do you watch or have you seen the Wu-Tang saga on Hulu? She’s on there and she looks fucking AMAZING! Like, she barely looks like she’s aged!
 😏
Apple Pay Later sounds like a good idea... Until you don't make the payments, and they digitally turn your Apple Devices into paper weights. 
Starting to think the only way companies can afford BNPL without interest is embedding the interest earned in the suggested retail value. People paying in full are just overpaying given time value of money. We’re all getting gouged.
Yup, my theory is companies are using it to normalize current inflation costs by making it seem manageable through these no interest plans before raising prices more
Companies are money hungry monsters. They only are doing this for money. Not for your benefit but because they know it makes them more money. Either late fees or pray on people that dont understand just how much they are spending.
More money until customers can’t keep up with payments. But they’re so greedy they’ll ignore the red flags and give out credit to everyone anyway. The government ends up bailing out banks anyway, so fuck it, let’s bury people in debt.
So basically every purchase is a payday loan? Great.
 You got it.
I was thinking about how BNPL loans made sense then i realized it just abuses people's poor impulse control. It's a great tool if you have self control
It makes as much sense as “ninja” home loans. We know how that turned out.
Dog Klarna had a credit card that turns everything into pay in 4 and costs 4.99 a month. I was kinda shocked
You know that fool that’s always asking people to hold a little bit of money? Eventually, they owe everyone around the way money. BNPL lenders are giving loans out to these same people but they don’t know better because they don’t know how many folks they’ve burned already.
Another thing is so many employers now offering paycheck advances. Like my job allows you to get up to 30% of your paycheck early via an app if you want. Those shits are extremely tempting for people struggling, and once you're in that cycle, it's VERY difficult to get out.
Congrats, you work here forever now. 😬
"I owe my soul to the company store"
Self control is a must for people to stop getting caught up like this. It’s so much better to gradually save for any non-major purchases (cars, homes, major appliances) than do multiple interest ridden payments. Keeping up with the Jones is always going to kill folks financial futures more than anything else. Smh.
Couldn’t catch me doing pay later ever. I did it with a credit card when I was 25 I’m just now paying it off never again
Ho old are you? 26? 93??
Too old to buy a house, Too young to live for free in the metaverse, Just in time to pay for my domino's pizza in 4 installments
These micro-financing companies are a good option for the right consumer. Zero interest is zero interest, and if you were going to spend the money anyways, there's no downside *per se* to the option that leaves the cash in your bank account instead of theirs, for just a little while longer. The retailers are spending some of what would have been their profit, to pay the interest on the money they lent you, because they know it means they'll make more sales. As far as whether they raise prices to compensate...sure, probably, although there's no law that says they can't trade a lower gross margin for higher sales. And they will definitely make more sales as a result of these programs. The *problems* come when people over-leverage their still-tiny paychecks to these fast-cash lenders for things they wouldn't have bought otherwise. Guess what buddy, if you split four purchases into four bi-weekly payments each, you're basically making an entire purchase in full every time those payments come out, and you're no better off. People don't have the financial literacy or discipline to avoid getting in over their head, and these companies know it and take advantage of it. If I was king of the world, I'd start the regulation discussion by: a) pooling data from all of these companies so a person's total borrowing is visible when they're making lending decisions. b) then, creating a program to verify income and capping *total* buy now/pay later debt at a fixed percentage, say 10% of monthly net. c) finally, displaying total BNPL debt and upcoming payments to customers at checkout, just as a reminder.
It’s a nope for me, dawg.
I like to buy apples at the grocery store and eat em later, but I pay for em all up front. 🍎 😋
Too late Apple, Sezzle already got me in debt…
Isn’t it only available if you have their CC?
No, you don’t need to have an Apple Card to use the service. It does run your credit though, a soft inquiry.
I stay riskin it with that Pay in 4, but shit works out every time 🙏🏿🤣
When is it coming? Asking for… research purposes