People have been falling for these scams forever. Naturally a generation which lives online will be more vulnerable to attacks coming through platforms they pay more attention to. Is there anything fundamentally new, though?
You can sign up to these services at the click of a button and they're also heavily promoted next to payment providers such as Visa. As opposed to them being a separate service you would sign up for, they're integrated into the checkout process as easily as PayPal.
I even saw a service similar to this here in Australia called "My pay now", where they say you can access a portion of your pay early. When in reality you're just borrowing an amount that is a portion of your upcoming pay, with the expectation that you will pay it back when you get paid. The way it was marketed I thought it was a government scheme where you would actually access a portion of your pay early, but no.
I don't want to be insulting or make this a flamewar, but really? c'mon. It's not like they're putting the coat of arms in their logo, there is _zero_ indication this is a government run scheme.
If a presumably fairly well educated and tech literate person thinks "MyPayNow" button next to their latest order of trendy clothing/smartphone accessories/whatever is a government scheme, I'm not sure how much anyone can do to prevent less well educated and tech literate people being taken advantage of...
My point being that the wording "My pay now" and the description of it allowing you access upto a quarter of your pay early, is fairly misleading. You aren't accessing your pay, you're obtaining a loan, of which the amount is a percentage of your salary/wage, which you will pay back with your pay.
Forget the idea of it being a government scheme, that was irrelevant to my argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payday_loan
This sort of behaviour is why “money lenders” became a pejorative term.
Prime example of the 'I'm not a rent-seeker, I'm a disruptor' if anyone wants to know what it looks like.
It is a scam if you know you've been bombarding them with algo-targeted ads and have been subjecting them to the endless amount of influencer-porn these kids seemingly cannot do without anymore due to a horrible data driven diet that people who work for FAANG work on almost exclusively.
It's a scam, just admit it, we all know what it is: you're targeting people who cannot and will not be able to afford much, and make them think this is what is missing in their life so you can lock them in debt and keep the consumerist cycle going.
You're the 21st century perversion of a Marketing con-man, but unlike the 20th century version with all the glamour, sex and booze you guys play fortnite, watch furry porn and get doordash sent to you while you suck on a vape in your empty apartment.
The real question is: why do so many think you guys are anything remotely close to being successful? And why does tech seem to set such low standards for what can be construed as success?
Next we're going to hear about how Robinhood was the great emancipator of the Millennial and Gen Z, and not really just a front-running racket for hedgefunds, too.
Young adults actually have processing problems over impulse control [0], and so cannot see any drawback to "not now" - in fact they likely do not have a way to fully conceptualise that something will occur in the future.
All "buy now, pay later" translates to is "instant gratification", nothing further.
Unlike all the examples above, Afterpay doesn't charge interest, has capped late payment fees, and has a very low debt ceiling. It's the perfect way for younger people to learn how to manage debt.