Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

Re:Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B by gonzo41 on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:38PM (#28032630)

Interesting product from CBA. Doesn't afterpay act more like a loan? From looking at this it looks like CBA is trying to get people to splash their money and manage the payback themselves. Those management fee's are also based on the idea you can get the card paid off in the month (CBA also use a rolling bill day. so they have a 30 day month and a 25 day payment period for that month. And those details are pretty opaque to newbies with cards. ).

You're effectively paying a somewhat high interest rate. From the looks of it CBA's low interest card would be comparable or cheaper if you were young and held a bit of rolling debt. And right now they have 15 months interest free on their 'low' rate card.

I think the difference that's better for afterpay customers is being able to have your purchase chunked into installments, effectively making it more like lay by.

Also, cba should have made it black so it didn't look you were holding a learners plate credit card.

Our Australian banks are lazy.

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Re:Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B by Khaine on Monday August 02, 2021 @12:16AM (#28032816)

Black is reserved for their premium card. NAB have a similar product https://www.nab.com.au/personal/credit-cards/nab-straightup-...

Yes the chunking into 4 payments, is the primary benefit of BNPL. It allows you to buy something significant (i.e. a laptop) and spread the payments over time.

The downside is its very easy to overspend and get stuck in a debt spiral

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Re:Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B by omniscient_oce on Monday August 02, 2021 @07:10PM (#28043847)

If someones cashflow is pushed to the edge with BNPL purchases it's so easy to get toppled over by an unexpected emergency. It really is quite scary thinking about it. Is it financial irresponsibility causing people to overextend themselves and their cashflow on frivolous purchases, or is it out of necessity and a wider issue such as poor economy / job market / wealth distribution causing people to turn to these services? - Either way, they feel rather predatory to me...

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Re:Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B by danpalmer on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:44AM (#28034656)

> Doesn't afterpay act more like a loan?

Yep. Buy-now-pay-later services are just short term loan providers. Part of what they're selling to merchants is the fact they are regulated as lenders. We use Klarna in the UK to offer BNPL for exactly this reason, even though we could likely offer it ourselves.

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