cover image: IThe hidden costs of "Buy Now, Pay Later" - Complaints to CFPB show need for action

20.500.12592/4c2cjc

IThe hidden costs of "Buy Now, Pay Later" - Complaints to CFPB show need for action

8 Mar 2022

You paid in Merchants pay similar, but lower, merchant advance over a weekly or bi-weekly discount fees to Visa, Mastercard, AmEx schedule and the store guaranteed that the and Discover to accept credit or debit item would be in stock after you’d paid the cards.5 Although merchants are sharply total cost (including some fees for the critical of the fees, the motivation for service). [...] Variants included Christmas clubs merchants to participate in the higher fee and other “holiday club” plans.1 BNPL programs may be to increase the size of the “shopping cart basket,” earning Layaway has largely been supplanted, first greater profits to offset the higher fees.6 by the ubiquity of credit cards and, largely in just the last three years, by the explosion of Our findings, based on a re. [...] Again, the BNPL complaints cover a wide range of issues and sub-issue categories, suggesting that consumers face BNPL problems that run the gamut of the dozens of issues and sub-issue choices that the CFPB provides consumers to describe their complaint better. [...] Conversely, most companies in the CFPB complaint database select from a pull-down menu of generic “public responses.” Nearly half of the over 1.2 million complaints posted by CFPB in the last 3 years have this company public response: “Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response.”41 Reading the company responses on the BBB pages provides insight. [...] PAGE 16 Consumer and civil rights advocates echo and amplify CFPB concerns Consumer advocates have amplified these concerns and also raised a number of other concerns about the BNPL business model, including the following: Consumer Reports:53 “Depending on the type of plan you use, you may be subject to fees and interest charges if you don't make the payments on time.
Pages
26
Published in
United States of America

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