Lots of people effectively use CCs to accumulate rewards and nerver face interest, and lots of people don't do that and subsidise the rewards of those that pay on time.
With BNPL, the interest is still paid by the 'economy' at even higher effective rates of interest by the merchants. The effective interest rates are in payday lending territory given how short term the lending is, 4% on the purchase paid over 6 weeks is a very high annualised rate.
In effect, merchants are subsidising BNPL consumers just like CC customers that pay interest are subsidising those CC customers that pay on time and collect rewards.
The result is the same, except BNPL is even worse. If someone buys a 200 pair of shoes on BNPL and misses a payment on the 150 loan, they get stung with a $10 late fee which is a massive effective annualised interest rate.
You also have merchants paying a WAY bigger tax on commerce through BNPL then they are on the CC systems and they b*tch about the CC fees! Because of no regulatory protection merchants have been forced to accept BNPL or lose business, just like wait the CC did years ago. They also.can't pass on fees despite using the same argumemts CCs used 20 yrs ago yet got slapped down by the RBA. #lobbying
This idea BNPL is this amazinf thing for c9nsumers may be true for sime who always pay on time and budget well (same argument for CCs). But for the economy overall it sucks die to fees being 3 times that of a CC purchase, and the consumers that often miss payments its more expensove credit than a CC.
