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Comment by coolcase | Hacker News Reader

He brushes over ethical concerns of BNPL but draws the line at sports betting.

But BNPL by design encourages you to buy things you can't afford and complicates your finances with more timed bills to pay. It makes it more likely people don't budget well and form buffers.

A PNBL would be better, add 10% tithe to every purchase that goes to a checking account. Once that reaches $1k it overflows to an index fund.

He says it won't be like 2008 bundling this stuff up and that might be right or wrong. To be 2008 you need 2 ingredients: combined gambling and banking operations at the banks (a legalised FTX of sorts) and some liars in the system misrepresenting the risk. Maybe a 3rd ingredient is a crazy/frenzy driving up the gambling into the bubbled asset.

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I've suggested a different take on PNBL in the context of gambling before, to protect people against addiction without outright making it illegal as is widely done today. The idea is if you want to gamble more than some unprotected quantity, you have to first allocate the money and leave it for a month or two. People with insufficient impulse control or financial security will find that hard, but light recreational users shouldn't be inconvenienced too much.

The same ideas can work for other things, though it's easiest to apply to predatory behaviour.

PNBL was a thing at some point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layaway) but was rendered obsolete by the advent of credit cards. Seems to me like a personal austerity measure which becomes more popular in worse economic conditions. The cynic in me believes that there's more money to be made when you encourage people to spend less responsibly and with less financial literacy.

Layaway is still very much a thing in some niche markets, e.g.: https://www.gunbroker.com/all/search?keywords=layaway

From the consumer pov, why would I opt for a PNBL option? If I have the money on hand, wouldn't I just make a regular purchase?

Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious what the sales pitch is here.

That's effectively any membership service where you get a discount... e.g. Amazon prime, arguably... or Membership grocery stores.

Pay up front for benefits that are realized later, upon further action.

I have a membership with my local craft brewery that I love to frequent that similarly could be considered a PNBL like financial thing.

Arguably, it's also gift cards, though yeah, without any benefit, no one really buys gift cards for themselves.

Hey sometimes gift cards are on sale! So in effect a pay now buy later.

My favorite restaurant often has a Christmas sale on gift cards (something like $10 when you buy $100) so I'll get a few for myself.

The sales pitch is for people who don’t have the money on hand. But hope they will later when their next paycheck comes in.

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