The hottest holiday shopping trend? Buy now, pay later
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The use of buy now, pay later services hit an all-time high this past Cyber Monday. Consumers spent $940 million online using BNPL, which they’ve continued coming back to as high inflation and credit card interest rates strain budgets. We dig into the risks these services carry. Plus, we hear about the latest rounds of layoffs at Spotify and some of the hurdles to HIV-prevention medication uptake.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The All You Can Eat music and podcast app Spotify is doing another severe round of layoffs. |
| 0:07.0 | The All You Can Eat music and podcast app, Spotify, is doing another severe round of layoffs. |
| 0:13.0 | 1,500 people will go, 17% of its staff. |
| 0:17.0 | While U.S. economic growth has been running warm to hot, |
| 0:20.0 | Spotify's chief executive is blaming slowing global economic growth and higher interest rates. |
| 0:25.5 | Marketplace is Nova Safo has more. |
| 0:28.0 | Spotify is cutting 17% of its workforce, about 1500 employees. |
| 0:33.0 | That's nearly double the number of people that let go in total during the previous two rounds of cuts earlier this year. |
| 0:40.0 | The company's CEO Daniel Ek in the letter employees, said the cuts may seem dramatic, |
| 0:44.8 | considering the company has returned to profitability, but he said, looking ahead over the next |
| 0:49.7 | two years, it became evident more cuts were necessary to reduce expenses. |
| 0:55.0 | Why? |
| 0:56.0 | When Spotify has nearly doubled its audience over the last three years? |
| 0:59.7 | It's because the music streaming provider has also been on a spending bench helped by loans with low interest |
| 1:05.2 | rates. It made a major push to expand its podcasting business. Now those cheap borrowing days |
| 1:10.7 | are over. Another reason is slowing economic growth. Keep in mind |
| 1:14.6 | Spotify is a global company. It relies heavily on subscribers who pay to listen and |
| 1:19.9 | 40% of those are in Europe where the economy may now be in a shallow recession. |
| 1:25.0 | I'm Nova sophomore for marketplace. |
| 1:27.0 | Eggnog, Mistletoe, assertions of most wonderful time of the year and buy now pay later. |
| 1:34.0 | Online shopping financed by plans that let people pay in multi-week installments hit |
| 1:38.9 | nine hundred forty million dollars. |
... |
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