Is buy now, pay later bad news or savvy spending?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is buy now, pay later the demon it’s made out to be?

Klarna, Laybuy and the rest of the delayed spending crew are coming in for lots of scrutiny at the moment.

Shoppers love them and shops pay them, but there are concerns on over-spending and the cost of not meeting payments.

Yet, surely spreading the cost of a purchase interest-free is a sensible financial move?

On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert discuss the rise of the buy now, pay later firms, how they work, how they make their money on interest-free credit, and why there are worries over what on the surface looks like a great deal.

On the topic of shopping, the team also talk trying to avoid Amazoning everything this Christmas – and where to turn to get things from local shops with convenience.

Also, on this week’s show they look at why the Bank of England held interest rates even as more tiers pain descended on Britain, the website that matches start-up ideas and the people who can do the work and finally Grace Gausden joins the show to discuss her Grace on the Case consumer column.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast. I'm Georgie Frost and alongside me and editor Simon Lambert. Today is
0:05.2	assistant editor Lee Boyce. And coming up by now, can't pay later. This is Money has been
0:10.6	investigating the terrifying price tag of the booming industry tempting millions of shoppers into debt.
0:16.7	And so-called influencers aren't helping. Simon has some tips if you're trying to avoid Amazoning it this Christmas,
0:23.7	while help is also at hand for those with a business idea, but lack the know-how.
0:28.4	The Bank of England leaves rates at a record low of 0.1% as it awaits the outcome of Brexit talks,
0:33.9	and Grace is on the case.
0:36.7	Or will be revealed.
0:37.8	Don't be getting to up to date.
0:38.9	With all the latest breaking money news, just go to this ismoney.co.uk or download the app.
0:43.7	But first, anyone who shops online will know what we're talking about, I think, by now.
0:48.6	It's happened, I think, pretty quickly over the last months, year perhaps.
0:53.8	But when you shop on many of the big
0:55.5	retailer sites, it comes to paying for your goods. You might notice now you get the option to pay
1:01.0	by something called Klarna in installments. It sounds too good to be true. You don't pay interest on it
1:06.7	and you don't have to pay everything all up and one go. However, a number of Instagram influencers have got in trouble recently for promoting Klarna
1:13.8	as a way to make yourself feel good during the current crisis.
1:18.8	All right, so it's not very responsible, Lee, certainly.
1:22.6	But is there really something so wrong with buy now, pay later services?
1:26.7	Now, Lee, making this to the podcast will know this
1:29.6	isn't a subject that is new to us you've discussed it with us in the past um clana who are they
1:36.7	what do they do so that's right georgia at the start of year we had a i actually did a big
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from This is Money, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of This is Money and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.