If BNPL was the same as credit cards, then why not just use credit cards?

BNPL often ignores credit check or specifically targets groups that credit cards would deem too risky.

For me this doubles the problem with the BNPL space: not only are the predatory, but I have serious concerns about their own risk management.

I knew of a start up that was experimenting with running their own BNPL service with zero credit checks. The users that were being targeted had a 30+% default rate (because other users had credit cards) but the upper bound of interest that could be charged was around 25%... the company seriously didn't understand why they weren't able to make profit on this product. But hey, revenue did grow which is all VCs cared about so it worked for them.