Buy now, pay later services, an alternative to credit cards, are growing in popularity, the Journal’s Angel Au-Yeung reported earlier this month.
She discussed them on today’s edition of our Tech News Briefing podcast, noting that while they can help careful consumers, using them requires caution.
Au-Yeung said on the podcast: “If you are smart with understanding what terms you’re signing up for, then they can be really helpful in the sense that if you are living paycheck-to-paycheck and you need a larger rainy day fund, then this potentially can be a way for you to control how much you’re spending monthly so that you have more liquidity to address any kind of emergencies that might come up. But that takes a great deal of self-control (from) the consumers. And essentially, what these buy now, pay later lenders are doing, (is) giving an opportunity for consumers to potentially overextend themselves.”