Buy-Now-Pay-Later: A Force For Good Or A Step Toward A Never-Ending Debt Spiral?

In an era where financial services evolve constantly, one trend has become a lightning rod for debate: Buy-Now-Pay-Later. Love it or hate it, BNPL has taken the financial world by storm, promising convenience and flexibility to consumers and increased conversions for online businesses. But it also faces criticism about its creation of questionable debt for products of questionable value. The jury is still out on BNPL’s merits.

How can we be sure we aren’t simply locking people into a cycle of debt by a different name? Does BNPL actually help people in need or is it just a no-interest way for wealthy people to buy cheap consumer goods? So what’s the answer? As Marshal Lux and Jeremy Solomon make clear in the latest episode of The Pnyx debating BNPL: it is complicated.