Buy what you want, today! Platform ecologies of ‘buy now, pay later’ services in Singapore

Abstract

The rising popularity of fintech‐driven solutions has reshaped financial markets and retail consumer behaviour. This paper examines the growing ‘buy‐now‐pay‐later’ (BNPL) phenomenon as a novel, platform‐driven financial innovation to understand how this digitally mediated economic arrangement has produced new financial subjects and subjectivities. Using the idea of ‘platform ecologies’ that combines the relational focus of financial ecologies with the logics of platform finance, this study highlights how the intermediary role of BNPL services has reshaped relational monetary practices through algorithmically driven modes of operating. Analysing Singapore's nascent BNPL landscape through content analysis of BNPL firm websites and critical media coverage of BNPL, this paper shows how automated technologies of risk assessment and debt collection are deployed to govern borrowers and keep them digitally attached to their debts, where creditworthiness is continuously evaluated in response to user transaction and repayment data. The strategic use of affect in framing BNPL services to satisfy immediate materialist consumption masks the fundamental nature of BNPL as debt, while the targeting of young individuals with no credit history through opaque techniques of credit and risk management creates new indebted subjects. The implications of such data‐driven practices in producing greater indebtedness and further shaping financial subjectivities are discussed.

Pricing strategy of first-enjoy-after-pay service offered by two-sided media platforms

“…Further, the application of after-pay is widely applied in various sectors, including marketing for everyday items (Schomburgk and Hoffmann, 2023), consumer transactions (Siemens, 2007;Niu et al, 2021;Tan, 2022;Aalders, 2023;Feng et al, 2023), supply chain (Yang and Chang, 2013;Khan et al, 2020), and financing credit (Kouvelis and Zhao, 2012). However, the specific implementation of after-pay needs to consider factors such as the application scenario, such as transaction type (Aalders, 2023), cultural background (Deufel et al, 2019), target audience (Feng et al, 2023), and affective states (Tan, 2022). Our context differs from the above literature in that we explored the use of after-pay in two-sided media platform subscription services considering the effect of mental accounts, and our findings offer valuable insights into platform operations.…”

“…Based on payment timing, there are three main schemes: pre-payment, immediate payment, and postpayment (Wu, 2022). The provision of payment schemes significantly impacts customer behavior (Deufel et al, 2019;Tan, 2022) as the timing of cash outflow can influence how consumers perceive a transaction (Loewenstein and Elster, 1992). Besides, prior studies empirically investigated various factors that influence consumers' decision-making regarding payment schemes, like the perception of financial stress (Agrawal and Gentry, 2020), appetite for risk (Cai et al, 2019), the personality of the consumer and "time styles" (Cotte et al, 2004;Rick et al, 2008), the concern for financial well-being (Netemeyer et al, 2018), and cultural difference (Deufel et al, 2019).…”

“…Further, the application of after-pay is widely applied in various sectors, including marketing for everyday items (Schomburgk and Hoffmann, 2023), consumer transactions (Siemens, 2007; Niu et al. , 2021; Tan, 2022; Aalders, 2023; Feng et al. , 2023), supply chain (Yang and Chang, 2013; Khan et al.…”

“…, 2019), target audience (Feng et al. , 2023), and affective states (Tan, 2022). Our context differs from the above literature in that we explored the use of after-pay in two-sided media platform subscription services considering the effect of mental accounts, and our findings offer valuable insights into platform operations.…”

Care for Transactions

“…These include concern for how the digital is remapping human and non‐human relations as well as digital maps themselves, with a growing interest in digital natures, digital ecologies, digital cities, digital geopolitics and even digital territory (Datta, 2018; Morris, 2022; Prebble et al, 2021; Searle et al, 2023; Smith et al, 2020; Woods, 2021; Zook & Graham, 2018). While smart urbanism and associated forms of platform capitalism continue to highlight the interdependencies of code/space, scholarship on digital geographies is also documenting spatial inequities within these interdependencies at multiple scales and in particular places, ranging from the platforms of online education and debt relations to the embodied experience of tech‐enabled home care (House‐Peters et al, 2019; Reid, 2022; Roos‐Breines et al, 2019: Sparke, 2017; Tan, 2022). Feminist arguments in these debates point to the contradictory possibilities of thriving otherwise and staying with the trouble of such digital spaces (McLean, 2020), and we think that a care‐full Transactions can continue to stay with the trouble in a similar way as it adapts to the wider changes forced on journals and their editors by the online ecosystems for publishing in which we are now embedded.…”