[HN Gopher] BNPLs: Businesses Needing Provided Legibility
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       BNPLs: Businesses Needing Provided Legibility
        
       Author : smitop
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-01-07 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bam.kalzumeus.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bam.kalzumeus.com)
        
       | phekunde wrote:
       | Earlier the buyers were made light by their pocket with sub-prime
       | loan financial engineering, now the target has moved to
       | businesses with this new financial engineering. Sounds bit
       | worrisome.
        
         | whoisburbansky wrote:
         | The article addresses systemic concerns with BNPLs fairly well,
         | is there anything about the arguments OP makes regarding this
         | kind of consumption being far less risky at a macro level than
         | the kind of wizardry that led to the mortgage crisis that you
         | specifically find unconvincing?
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Businesses are supposed to be sophisticated enough that they
         | should be allowed to spend ~3% more of revenue on customer
         | acquisition if they want to.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | TheJoeMan wrote:
       | I've actually been curious how this Klarna works out for the
       | consumer and found this article very insightful.
       | 
       | I would like to know the meaning of the title though, what is
       | "legibility" in this case?
        
         | mindslight wrote:
         | I took it in the Ribbonfarm sense
         | (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-
         | call...), in that they're providing credit to people who
         | weren't otherwise legible to the banking system.
        
         | jstanley wrote:
         | It's just an alternative sequence of words with the acronym
         | "BNPL" which means "Here's how BNPL businesses work".
         | "Legibility" means roughly "ease of understanding".
        
         | vageli wrote:
         | In this case, I think it means to clarify the nature of the
         | business and is a play on your exact sentiment. The article is
         | providing legibility to buy now pay later businesses (like
         | Klarna). Likely the word was chosen to match the initialism.
        
       | dqv wrote:
       | I'm really curious to know what the typical percentage of sales
       | come from BNPLs, if even in a specific industry. I also did my
       | own quick research to find out how e.g. Klarna made money and was
       | surprised at how much higher the cut is they take vs cards. But
       | it makes sense since a lot of people probably use cards to pay
       | the BNPL provider.
       | 
       | Another thing for users: BNPLs help you build up your credit. If
       | you have a credit card that only has a limit of $200 and you want
       | to buy something for $250, you can use the BNPL option and pay
       | down the credit card each time the charge posts. You create a
       | payment history. Europeans, I know this all sounds ridiculous to
       | you, but we just love credit over here in the US.
        
         | blinker21 wrote:
         | From my experience in the finance dept of a few large
         | Australian apparel retailers, I see BNPL sales from online at
         | around 35% of sales dollars and in the brick & mortar stores
         | around 1-3% of sales dollars.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | How is fraud / charge backs handled with BNPL? Who owns the
       | liability, etc?
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-07 23:01 UTC)