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Recode Daily

The risks of “buy now, pay later” apps

Recode Daily

Recode

Society & Culture, Science, Technology

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2021

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Square just announced they’re buying out Afterpay, a “buy now, pay later” app. The move could mean CashApp will soon offer the option to pay for everything in four easy payments. It’s a trend that’s gaining traction among young shoppers, but as Vox’s Terry Nguyen (@terrygtnguyen) explains, it comes with risks. Read Terry’s story here. Enjoyed this episode? Rate Recode Daily ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. What do you want to learn about on Recode Daily? Send your requests and questions to recodedaily@recode.net. We read every email! Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Recode Daily by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices This episode was made by: Host: Adam Clark Estes (@adamclarkestes) Producer: Alan Rodriguez Espinoza (@ardzes) Engineer: Melissa Pons Support Recode Daily by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this episode comes from Contentful.

0:03.8

In today's digital first world content is the customer experience, but to build those

0:08.8

experiences digital teams need an intelligent solution that can keep pace with their business

0:13.2

goals.

0:14.2

Enter Contentful.

0:16.0

Contentful empowers digital teams to scale and launch experiences quickly and efficiently.

0:20.9

Their composable content platform makes it easy to create, collaborate, manage, and deliver

0:25.8

content across all of your channels all from one place.

0:29.2

Contentful.

0:30.2

Where content drives business momentum, get started at contentful.com.

0:34.8

Square, the owners of CashApp recently announced that they're buying afterpay.

0:47.7

The ever-growing buy-now-pay-later service.

0:50.5

This acquisition is a big deal.

0:52.2

The company's paying $29 billion in stock and will likely integrate the service into CashApp

0:58.1

in the near future.

0:59.5

That means that soon it could be easier than ever for the app 70 million users to pay

1:03.3

for everyday items in installments.

1:06.3

That sounds like a pretty good deal, right?

1:08.0

But the buy-now-pay-later model can't be risky.

1:10.3

Fox's Terry Nguyen has been looking into services like Afterpay and she's heard from

1:13.9

shoppers who use it.

1:15.7

I asked her to tell us more about the risks and potential benefits.

...

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