You miss the point mate.
It is managing cash OUTFLOW. Not managing cashflow.
General people who are employed do not control cash in-flows, they get paid on a schedule negotiated when they were employed. Thus if there are purchases coming up which do not fit within their weekly spending allotment, but are close to approximately 2months of savings, there are 3 options:
1. borrow money to buy it via credit card or pay-day loan (pay interest)
2. Buy with afterpay and pay in 4 allotments over the next 2-8 pay cycles (depending if your weekly, biweekly or monthly)
3. save up for 8 weeks and then buy it
For me, I am paid biweekly thus afterpay would be great for things like phones where I allow myself $500 per pay cycle on 'want' spending. Usually I don't come close to this, but all the rest of the money I usually put into savings, investments, RRSP (like super but in Canada) or into GICS (term deposits).
I easily have the money to buy a phone upfront. That is not the issue. The issue for me is that it would disrupt my normal budgeting allowances and force me to dip into savings rather than my cash-inflows account.
Afterpay, I could just take it from my normal spending allotment and I would see that I have slightly less additional savings over 8 weeks, rather than a dip and then recovery of my savings.
This also helps as I get a premium on my savings interest for no withdrawing, so in the past I would of likely delayed the purchase rather than dip into my account.
That's just me, there is also a huge amount of people who just want what they see today, and pay for it later. That's fine too.
There is some great perks to Afterpay philosophy.
