The Not-So-Obvious Costs of “Buy Now, Pay Later” Plans

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“Buy now, pay later” may seem like a safer alternative to credit cards, but it has hidden dangers.

Yeah. BNPL firms like to advertise themselves as risk-free credit options. But it’s only free if you follow all the rules. Many consumers complained to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that these BNPL firms aren’t disclosing the costly hidden fees and interest rates that can be incurred when someone falls behind on payments.

In the normal consumer finance world, if I apply for a card and Equifax or TransUnion, one of the big credit agencies says, “Lizzie’s kind of overextended on her other debts,” they’re not going to give it to me. And yet, it sounds like that might happen here. Is anyone checking to make sure that the people who are using these services can pay for them?That’s a bit of a black box at the moment.

Right. There might be a case for that argument, but if you can’t assess how many other loans customers are taking out at once, that seems to be riskier. As of right now, I don’t believe they have started reporting to credit bureaus. While they say that they’re not actively sending consumer data to these credit reporting agencies, there are still other ways that these “buy now, pay later” loans can make their way to credit histories.

While these installment loans seem simple enough, a lot of people have trouble actually keeping track of what they owe and when. These repayment schedules can quickly become confusing. Imagine you’re making a number of purchases on different days of the week with more than two dozen services available, all offering different terms and conditions, some of them working on different payment schedules. A lot of the “buy now, pay later” services require this mandatory auto pay.

 

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File under predatory capitalism.

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