Everything you don’t know about BNPL and what you must know now

by Robert McGarvey

File this under: What you don’t know that you don’t know can hurt you.

That’s my takeaway from a long conversation I recently had with Bryce Deeney, a co-founder and CEO of equipifi.

Deeney and I had talked about BNPL two years ago and I thought I knew all I needed to know about it – it’s interest free, short term, small dollar loans much loved by Gen Z who use it to pay for stuff like a Taylor Swift MP3. Default rates were unknown but thought to be double digit. And there’s no way to track how many active BNPL loans a particular consumer has so lending money is definitely a crap shoot. No wonder credit unions, most of them, are sitting on the sidelines.

Color me out of touch. What I knew had been true a couple years ago but no longer, Deeney patiently explained to me. Pretty much everything I “knew” was flat out wrong.

The more I’ve thought about what I learned in my talk with Deeney, the more I realized I needed to rethink my beliefs about many other hot credit union topics such as AI, instant payments, crypto currency and more. Down below these issues are briefly addressed.

Continued at CUInsight