Went out for dinner— bill was $42 (which is a whole other problem). When I went to pay, the app asked if I wanted to split it into 4 payments of $10.50… with Klarna.
At first I laughed… then realized I’ve seen this everywhere lately:
Fast food
Movie tickets
$15 coffee orders
Even my Spotify subscription
Is this the new normal? BNPL for everyday stuff?
Anyone else noticing this? Have you actually used BNPL for stuff like this — food, movies, whatever? Did it help, or just make it way too easy to spend without thinking?
Genuinely curious how people are handling it.
I just got offered a 4-month payment plan… for a $42 dinner. What are we doing??
byu/Jertopia inpersonalfinance
Posted by Jertopia
14 Comments
A good way for people to overspend and get themselves into trouble when something unexpected happens and they don’t have the money to pay.
Were you under the impression people selling you things weren’t going to try everything to get you to spend more?
There is a reason why car salespeople focus on monthly payments instead of total cost of the car
Check out some documentaries on it. Crazy stuff. You keep doing BNPL for items throughout the month, then the payments aren’t due all at once, they’re due a month from the original purchase date. So you could have a maximum of 7 payments every week. And every time you miss a payment it’s a separate late fee that just stacks and stacks.
It’s peak consumerism. Spend spend spend spend, then all of the sudden you have 40 payments to make a month on micro financing transactions. It’s no different than how many Americans have such absurd amounts of credit card debt.
Notice how the BNPL companies have been pushing hard to exclude their data from credit scores?
I think we should all be extremely worried.
The sad part, a lot of people would take up the offer. It’s terrible. Let’s pay in 4 everything.
It’s everywhere and it’s really scary to me. I considered using it to buy something recently and I had to sit down and think about why I felt the urge. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford the purchase, I just felt like “cushioning the blow” in a sense might make the purchase cheaper. Which it doesn’t. It just reduces the amount you pay up front. And I think the fact that it reduces the initial price is what has made so many people fall into the trap. In reality if you can’t afford it right then, and it’s not an absolute necessity, you cannot buy it.
I’ve never used it but I see where this is going.
Have you ever been surprised by a dinner bill? I have, here and there. But for the most part I say, “oof,” and pay the damn bill. If for whatever reason I *don’t* have the money, I can see the sudden emotional stress that would make me hit that, “pay later,” button.
I honestly don’t think that many people are using it. But if you get maybe 1 out of 100 people? Maybe they do pay it, but you’ll find free money *somewhere.*
Credit rating agencies likely detect that and auto drop your credit rating; same if customer uses a rent-to-own contract. .
BNPL has existed for a long time through credit cards
Klarna is on everything nowadays. Just noticed payments through Klarna get offerd on Ebay too when you win an auction. No matter how much it cost.
It’s a way to keep people spending.
New normal, and of course I don’t use it. Anyone who has to finance a dinner bill really, really, really needs to just eat in.
They don’t report to credit bureaus, so just don’t pay it. They try to stay out of the credit business, due to higher regulations. It’s a company trying to limp to an IPO, but losing all sorts of money last I checked