Buy Now Panic Later

This time of year gets expensive fast.

A trip gets planned.

Tickets go on sale.

You need something for the trip.

Then something else comes up.

You get to checkout, look at the total and think:

Maybe not.

Then, right underneath it:

OR PAY IN 4.

Oh.

Well, I can do that.

And just like that, something you weren’t going to buy becomes something you can afford.

At least today.

⸻

INTENT

MAKE EXPENSIVE THINGS EASIER TO AFFORD.

It’s a genuinely useful idea.

Sometimes you have the money for something, you just don’t want all of it leaving your account at once.

Sometimes you don’t have all of it yet.

Your options used to be pretty simple:

Save up.

Put it on a credit card.

Or don’t buy it.

Pay in 4 gave us another option.

Split the cost.

Get the thing now.

Pay the rest over time.

A flight doesn’t have to wait.

The ticket doesn’t sell out while you’re saving.

One purchase doesn’t have to wipe out your account for the week.

MORE FLEXIBILITY. LESS PRESSURE.

Of course we liked it.

⸻

OUTCOME

THEN EVERYTHING BECAME AFFORDABLE TODAY.

Pay in 4 started showing up everywhere.

Not just for the big purchase you’d already thought through.

The clothes.

The shoes.

The thing you found twelve minutes ago and suddenly cannot imagine living without.

And somewhere in there, the payment plan stopped being something we chose after deciding to buy.

It started helping us make the decision.

Because the full price might make you hesitate.

One fourth of it?

That’s not bad.

CAN I AFFORD THIS?

quietly became:

CAN I AFFORD THIS TODAY?

And those are two very different questions.

⸻

Then two weeks pass.

A charge comes through.

Oh, right.

That.

Then another.

Something you’ve already worn.

A night that’s already happened.

A thing you were deeply obsessed with for approximately four days.

Past you apparently had a lot of confidence in future you.

Unfortunately,

YOU ARE FUTURE YOU NOW.

⸻

REMAINS

NOTHING ACTUALLY GOT CHEAPER.

That’s the strange part.

Pay in 4 still does exactly what it was supposed to do.

It takes a big expense and makes it easier to manage.

Sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

But the same thing that makes a necessary purchase easier to afford can make an unnecessary purchase easier to justify.

THE PRODUCT DIDN’T CHANGE.

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PRICE DID.

We started looking at what something costs right now instead of what it costs.

And when plans pile up, tickets drop, trips get booked and there’s always one more thing…

that little number at checkout can feel very convincing.

Buy now, pay later was supposed to give us more flexibility with expensive purchases.

It did.

It also gave us a very easy way to spend money we haven’t earned yet.

Both can be true.

Maybe that’s what remains:

We didn’t make expensive things cheaper.

WE MADE “I CAN’T AFFORD THAT” EASIER TO GET AROUND.

And eventually,

LATER ALWAYS SHOWS UP.