Buy Now Pay Later isn’t all fun and games
Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand
Our vision is for all women, girls and families to be safe, well, strong and connected.
This week the ‘Afterpay Day’ sale is in full force from Thursday the 16th until Sunday the 19th of March, encouraging people to spend big using Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). This marketing onslaught makes BNPL look harmless, even fun. But Afterpay Day hides the murky reality of BNPL use in Australia.??
At Good Shepherd, we know from our Safety Net for Sale report that BNPL isn’t just used for ‘nice to have’ items, but for life’s essentials, like children’s and baby products, food and groceries, utility bills, and transport. Some of our practitioners report that women are shouldered with unmanageable BNPL debts after fleeing family violence and needing money for basics.?
BNPL can cause great financial harm. Around 73 percent of our practitioners report that say that their clients have missed essential payments, or cut back on or gone without essentials, to service BNPL debt. This isn’t just a problem for our clients, with ASIC finding that one in five BNPL users in the general community are having to make the same sacrifices to pay BNPL debts on time.?
BNPL debts begin to accumulate, and the late fees (effective interest rates) make it extremely difficult to pay off. 84 percent of our practitioners report that clients open additional BNPL accounts, to manage their original BNPL debt.??
Regulatory loopholes make BNPL ripe for financial abuse – a form of family violence. 25 percent of our practitioners see abusive debt in at least half of their clients using BNPL, where perpetrators force women to open multiple BNPL accounts, or fraudulently take out BNPL debts in their name. This is dangerous debt and leaves women financially trapped in abusive relationships.???
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What does this mean for Afterpay Day sales???
Let’s ensure this year’s Afterpay Day sales are the last days of the regulatory wild west. BNPL providers have had a free, and very profitable, run that’s exploited people’s financial vulnerability.
That’s why Good Shepherd is calling on the Federal government to:???
*statistics from this article are from the Safety Net for Ssale report: https://goodshep.org.au/publications/the-role-of-buy-now-pay-later-in-exploiting-financial-vulnerability/?
Archivist / Researcher / Writer
1 年How about another take on BNPL: lets imagine that the Reserve Bank of Australia might have tolerated its growth up to late 2021 (because BNPL purchases boosted retail sales and potentially consumer price inflation too) but then turned away from it in Oct 2021 as its focus shifted to managing overall demand and moderating inflation: yes, the RBA's 22 Oct 2021 media release noted “The Board has also concluded that it would be in the public interest for ‘buy now, pay later’ providers to remove their no-surcharge rules”,?and around the same time the RBA abandoned its Yield Curve Control program to keep the 3 year bond rate at 0.1% (from memory it jumped to around 0.8% once the RBA stopped buying). So if you are fighting the proliferation of BNPL, you are, arguably, assisting the RBA to implement its monetary policy objectives too. Go GSANZ!