Buy now pay later services as a way to pay: credit consumption and the depoliticization of debt

ABSTRACT

The use of buy now pay later (BNPL) services has grown rapidly in recent years. Existing research has considered the regulatory challenges they pose, but further work is required to map their significance as a means of normalizing and naturalizing debt. In response, this article focuses on the situated landscape of marketing and branding of BNPL services through analysis of their websites and apps, a walking ethnography of a large shopping centre, and interviews with BNPL customers. We find that BNPL services nurture a “structure of feeling” that is reminiscent of digitally intimate online spaces, and claim that by generating a sense of pleasure and fun they distinguish themselves from other comparatively “serious” financial services. We ultimately contend that this aids them in presenting themselves as simply a “way to pay” rather than a form of credit, arguing that this represents a significant new step in the depoliticization of debt.

KEYWORDS:

• Buy now pay later
• consumer credit
• debt
• marketing
• personal finance

Introduction

This article responds to Langley’s (2014a) call for greater attention to the consumption of credit. It focuses on buy now pay later (BNPL) services, which have grown rapidly since the mid-2010s in relation to both their use and their availability and considers their sociological significance. Previous research has identified affects of indebtedness (Davey 2019; Dawney, Kirwan, and Walker 2020; Lazzarato 2012), and has focused on how the interfaces of digital pay-day loan providers shape customers’ interactions with them via their design (Ash et al. 2018). We seek to extend this work to consider the affective appeal of BNPL services by analyzing how their digital interfaces, online spaces and branding practices generate a specific “structure of feeling” (Anderson 2014; Williams 1971) that is reminiscent of digitally intimate online spaces. We argue that in addition to explaining some of the appeal of these services for young women (who constitute their largest market) this “structure of feeling” nurtures a sense of intimacy, pleasure and fun. This enables BNPL services to position themselves as simply a way to pay rather than a form of credit by associating them with a sense of fun and frivolity that contrasts markedly with the seriousness of legacy financial services. This development represents a further evolution in credit as a consumer product, in which the affective appeal of a product is used to mask its status as a form of credit. The significance of this finding stems primarily from the social consequences of the normalization and naturalization of debt. Amid welfare state retrenchment, wage stagnation and growing inflation increasing numbers of vulnerable consumers are turning to forms of consumer credit that carry with them high costs and other unfavourable conditions (such as limited consumer protections in the case of BNPL services) to supplement their income (Dagdeviren et al. 2020). These forms of credit are increasingly used to meet the costs of social reproduction, meaning that if the costs of debt servicing become unsustainable they pose significant material limits on the population’s ability to continue to reproduce itself (see Roberts and Soederberg 2014).

BNPL services allow customers to purchase a product from a merchant (whether online or in store), receive the product immediately, and then repay the cost of the product to the third party BNPL service in instalments on a set timeframe. They have been compared to in-store services such as lay-by (in which merchants put aside an item that customers pay off over time, and receive at the end of the payment period), but are perhaps more reminiscent of existing instalment-based methods of repayment that allow customers to take goods home while paying for them over time (RBA 2021). There are two key differences between BNPL services and existing instalment-based payment methods. Firstly, they are provided by a third party rather than the store that the customer is buying goods from. Indeed, the majority of BNPL services charge the merchant for a percentage of each sale and then provide the balance of the sale to the merchant. Secondly, BNPL services are accessed digitally. Customers engage with them either through their websites or via their apps, each of which are used to apply for approval for a spending limit (essentially a credit limit). Although BNPL services are used primarily for online shopping, their use for in-store purchases is also mediated through their apps which generate a scannable barcode or QR code, or provide a virtual card that can be used for both in-store and online transactions.

Advocates of BNPL services have argued that they are beneficial for consumers because they do not charge interest and make the bulk of their revenue from merchants rather than customers (AFIA 2022). However, research has shown that customers using BNPL services spend more than they otherwise would (ASIC 2018), and it is on this basis that merchants agree to partner with them. Additionally, peak bodies such as Financial Counselling Australia (2021) have reported that their members have witnessed a significant growth in BNPL customers entering into loan cycles similar to those experienced by pay-day loan customers (see Banks et al. 2015; Stegman 2007) and using credit cards and other forms of credit to pay off BNPL debts to avoid late fees. When combined with findings that consumers are increasingly using BNPL services to cover expenses such as food, rent and utilities (FCA 2021), these conditions can be read through Soederberg’s (2014) concept of the “debtfare state” in which social risks have been increasingly privatized in the neoliberal era, and the naturalization of the experiences of debt that result from this have led to the equation of debt with individual moral failings, rather than with systemic inequalities.

In this article, we draw on an analysis of BNPL websites and apps, a walking ethnography of a large shopping centre in Newcastle, Australia, and interviews with BNPL customers. Empirically this article provides an analysis of a financial product that has attracted widespread public attention but has rarely been considered in academic research. Conceptually the article extends Langley’s (2014a) work on the consumption of credit by considering how a credit product can successfully market itself as a desirable consumer item while masking its status as credit. In so doing it also extends existing work on credit and affect. While existing work has focused, for instance, on the need for credit card users to have an affective attachment to their debt in order to experience a sense of obligation to repay it (see Deville 2015), we explore the role of affect in the consumption of credit, focusing on the affective appeal of BNPL services.

Buy now pay later, financialization and consumers

Due to their relatively recent emergence as a significant market force BNPL services have been addressed predominantly in relation to the regulatory challenges that they pose in the extant literature (see Gerrans, Baur, and Lavagna-Slater 2021; Johnson, Rodwell, and Hendry 2021). BNPL services are, however, situated within what has been termed the financialization of everyday life, referring to the penetration of financialized logics into individual and household decisions and behaviours (Adkins 2018; Martin 2002). They also form part of a recent expansion and normalization of consumer credit (Langley 2008; Pellandini-Simányi and Vargha 2020; Roberts and Soederberg 2014) and, as stated above, can be understood with reference to the work of Langley (2014a, 2014b) and others (Deville 2015; Marron 2014) who claim that credit products themselves have been repositioned as consumer goods. Specifically, these authors argue that credit products are marketed as part of an overall lifestyle, facilitating aspirations for and access to a desired future (see also Bernthal, Crockett, and Rose 2005). We take this account of credit products not simply as vehicles for consumption, but as a consumer good in their own right, as a point of departure for this article, using it as an entry point for considering how BNPL services use branding and marketing to position themselves as attractive to specific consumer identities and desires. Branding specifically tries to personalize a company’s relation to consumers. Branding and marketing therefore underpin “the affective relations between brands and consumers, which typically include some degree of trust, respect and loyalty but may also include playfulness, scepticism and dislike” (Lury 2004, 10). In his work on cultural branding Holt (2004) has also considered how iconic brands gain cultural power through their role in expressing identity myths that provide a salve for major social contradictions. In his work on Jack Daniel’s whiskey Holt claims that the brand’s cultural power stems from its role in sustaining a specific ideal of masculinity informed by a revision of the frontier myth. We draw on this work to consider how the branding of BNPL services may similarly seek to aid consumers in managing major social contradictions, with a particular focus on the way that BNPL services are marketed to young women.

Research on BNPL customers has consistently found that young women form their largest customer base, and that the average age of their customers is lower than that of other financial products such as credit cards, personal loans, and pay-day loans (ASIC 2018; NCOSS 2021). Many BNPL services appear to purposely market themselves to this customer base (as discussed later in this article), although none have publicly explained their rationale for doing so. Their focus on young women forms part of the expanding “feminisation of finance” through which the financial services industry has increasingly turned its attention to women as an under-exploited consumer market by offering products that increasingly expand into the domestic realm of the home (Allon 2014). This reading resonates with BNPL services, which are used primarily for online shopping (RBA 2021). In addition to representing an under-exploited market, women are often constructed as ideal subjects of marginal lending because they are viewed as cautious and risk averse when compared with men (although the reality may be more complex than this – see Nelson 2015) and are disproportionately likely to bear the brunt of the social risks that have increasingly been shifted from the public to the private sphere over recent decades (Allon 2014). While this literature helps us to understand why BNPL services may target young women in the marketing of their products, we leave discussion of how BNPL services seek to appeal to young women to the latter part of this article.

Recent research addressing digitally mediated loans has focused on the digital interfaces that mediate the relationship between the customer and loan provider. For instance, Ash et al. (2018) have considered how high-cost short-term loan products are accessed and used in consumers’ everyday lives, and how their interfaces shape consumers’ engagement with them by reducing practical, affective or emotional “frictions” that may cause them to pause or stop the process of applying for a loan product. Notably, BNPL services are used primarily for online shopping, and are mediated through digital interfaces even when they are used for in-store purchases. For this reason they present parallels with the interfaces described in Ash et al.’s (2018) research. Moreover, BNPL services are marketed to prospective merchant partners on the basis that their use reduces “cart abandonment” – a phenomena in which customers shopping online leave the site after selecting items, but before paying for them (see Kukar-Kinney and Close 2009). Notably, this reinforces the relevance of Langley’s (2014a) claim that far from being an already-present product of a mis-match between one’s income and desire for consumption, demand for consumer credit is actively manufactured. Although we are similarly interested in the design and representation of BNPL services in this article, we take a different approach by focusing on how the appeal of BNPL services is shaped not by their specific design, but by the affective appeal that they nurture. We outline our approach to analyzing this in the following section.

Theoretical framework

The conceptual framing of this article takes inspiration from Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria’s (2021) work on consumer responsibilization in the online micro-lending market, which draws on Anderson’s work on neoliberal affects. In explaining his focus on affect, Anderson (2016) argues that collective affects form part of the conditions that allow for the formation of particular expressions or iterations of neoliberalism, and that understanding the affective life of neoliberalism is thus central to understanding how it emerges, forms and changes. Drawing on these claims, Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria (2021, 493) study consumer responsibilization in the online micro-lending market by understanding consumer subject creation as “a process animated by affective encounters” and attending to the ways in which these affective encounters are mediated by the online platforms on which they occur. In so doing, Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria (2021, 498) identify how a particular structure of feeling – an atmosphere of aspirational hope – is nurtured by intermediaries in the online micro-lending market to “shape the capacities of prospective lenders to affect and to be affected by social problems, such as poverty”. The authors then show how apparatuses of affirmation and relatability are employed to intervene into affective encounters in order to cultivate affective subjects who “feel empowered to act as entrepreneurial agents of social change” by providing disadvantaged borrowers with loans, or to cultivate a sense of intimacy and closeness that constructs a similar sense of responsibility, leading to the provision of a loan (Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria 2021, 503). Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria (2021, 495) follow Anderson (2014) in understanding a “structure of feeling” as “a pervasive atmosphere or collective mood that exerts a force on how life is lived and experienced in certain socio-historical settings”. Put differently, a structure of feeling informs how people comport themselves to the world in a given time and place. We follow Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria in taking up this definition. Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria’s (2021, 493) focus on structures of feeling and apparatuses are each informed by Anderson’s (2014) “affective analytics”, and their analytical framework “approaches consumer subject-creation as a process animated by affective encounters – consumption encounters through which people’s capacities to affect and to be affected are transformed”. It is thus particularly well aligned with our aim of understanding what, beyond specific terms and conditions, is appealing about BNPL services; an aim that prompts us to interrogate their affective appeal.

Our understanding of affect is drawn from the work of Anderson (2014, 9–10) who defines it as consisting of “bodily capacities to affect and be affected that emerge and develop in concert”, and as pertaining to the capacities, rather than existing properties, of bodies. We follow Anderson’s approach to operationalizing this definition into a means of analyzing affective life. For Anderson (2014, 11), this begins by attending to “differentiated capacities to affect and be affected” such as exhaustion, pain and greed. It then entails tracing how affects “emerge from and express specific relational configurations of images, discourses and affects, whilst also themselves becoming elements within those formations” (Anderson 2014). We draw on this approach by considering how BNPL services seek to affect their customers by engaging in relational configurations that are familiar to young women, who form their primary consumer base. Importantly, BNPL services are most commonly encountered through visible symbols at the point of sale and through their apps and websites, and as such are typically encountered through representations and discourses.¹

Methods

This article addresses the following research question: how are BNPL products represented in digital and physical spaces, and how does this shape their affective appeal? We chose to study the presence of BNPL services in both digital and physical spaces because, while typically associated with digital spaces, they are also used in-store at the point of sale.

Three inter-connected studies underpin this article – they each form part of a programme of research on young people and “new” forms of debt. The first study focused on the digital presence of BNPL services on apps and websites. We conducted a content analysis of the websites and apps of eleven BNPL services. Eight of these services were accessible via websites and apps (Bundll, Afterpay, Klarna, Openpay, Humm, Laybuy, Fupay, and Zip Pay), and three only had a website presence (Pay It Later, Latitude Pay, and Payright). The BNPL services included in this study were identified through a review of apps available in the Apple and Google Play app stores, review of financial services blogs and websites, and review of reports from industry bodies such as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Only those available in Australia (and thus accessible for us to download) were included in the study. However, the rapid development of the BNPL market means that new services have entered the market since we conducted our study in late 2020–early 2021, meaning that it is best considered as a “point in time” snapshot of the BNPL market in Australia as opposed to a definitive review. Data collected from the apps and websites were collated and analyzed individually by the first two authors using a shared data sampling frame which was developed inductively during a pilot phase of the study (Holman 2017). The resulting data categories included images, text, interactivity and overall design for each website and app. Sampling and preliminary data analysis were then cross-checked and thematic codes generated inductively as a team. The thematic codes (combined with those that emerged during the second phase of the study) form the basis of the findings presented below.

The second study was an analysis of physical representations of BNPL services. Data were collected using the method of walking ethnography, which has been proposed as a useful means of studying the “everyday” (Yi’En 2014). It is a means for not just observing but also experiencing embodiment and the social patterns of others (Lee and Ingold 2020). For this study, we were interested in exploring sites of everyday consumption and viewing representations of BNPL services from a customer perspective. The first two authors visited 215 shops across one large shopping centre and adjacent homemakers’ precinct in Newcastle, New South Wales. The shopping centre that we visited is one of two large centres in the city of Newcastle (approximately two hours north of the state capital of Sydney by road). Each of the centres are roughly the same size and contain many of the same chain stores, and the choice of one centre over the other for data collection was informed by the proximity of the homemakers’ precinct, which broadened the range of available stores. We initially visited five shops together to compare notes and moderate data collection, and then divided the data collection equally, discussing our observations intermittently throughout the process. A shared data sampling frame was used to collate field notes on what, if any, BNPL products were advertised in store, the type of signage, and their placement in stores. Data were collated and analyzed individually, and the two researchers then generated themes inductively together.

The third study was based on interviews conducted with 29 young adults (aged 18–29) who had used BNPL services. These participants were recruited via paid advertising on Meta and flyers posted in public areas such as supermarkets and community noticeboards, and a professional recruitment company was contracted to recruit the latter half of the sample when recruitment began to slow down. Twenty-four of the participants identified as women, and five as men. However, the gender imbalance of the sample does not adversely affect this article due to its focus on young women. All of the participants used BNPL services primarily or exclusively online and accessed them via their apps. When paired with wider usage patterns showing that BNPL services are used primarily for online purchases (RBA 2021), this reinforces the relevance of our focus on digital spaces. This study was approved by the University of Newcastle human research ethics committee under protocol number H-2020-0219 and the names provided for the participants are pseudonyms.

Findings and discussion

The following discussion is divided into two sections. The first section, titled “BNPL, affect and relatability in digitally intimate spaces” begins by considering the similarities between BNPL apps and websites and social media sites, drawing on the example of Pinterest. In doing so, this section claims that BNPL apps and websites and social media platforms make similar affective appeals to consumers, cultivating affects of relatability that nurture a fun and pleasurable structure of feeling. The remainder of this section is dedicated to explaining the specific affective appeals that BNPL services make to young women, and why they are successful. The second section, titled “BNPL services as a way to pay”, explains the significance of the structure of feeling nurtured by BNPL apps and websites. Specifically, it puts forward the argument that this fun and pleasurable structure of feeling helps BNPL services to distinguish themselves from other forms of consumer credit, allowing them to present themselves as simply a “way to pay”. We ultimately argue that the representation of BNPL services as a “way to pay” rather than a form of debt represents a further development in the normalization and de-politicization of debt, as well as a new development in the consumption of credit.

BNPL, affect and relatability in digitally intimate spaces

While analyzing BNPL services’ websites and apps we found that some of them contained features, aesthetics and affective appeals that were reminiscent of those seen on social media platforms. One example of this is provided by Klarna, a Swedish fintech firm that launched their BNPL service in Australia at the beginning of 2020, which includes an “inspiration” feature on their app that allows users to engage with a collage of styles and items that interest them. Specifically, users identify trends that they are interested in (for instance “vertical stripes” or “earthy tones”) and then receive curated suggestions within the app based on these preferences. This feature mimics the functionality of Pinterest, an image sharing and social media platform on which users “pin” images that correspond with their interests and are then recommended similar or related content. Such tools are described as being helpful for customers, using taglines such as “Tell us what you like to help us find the best ideas for your inspiration” (Klarna), though in reality they are targeted marketing devices designed to personally tailor users’ consumption experience. Notably, Pinterest – like BNPL services – has a predominantly female user base, with male investors initially passing on it because they were unsure what people (men) would do with it (Phillips, Miller, and McQuarrie 2014). Phillips, Miller, and McQuarrie (2014) identify that while Pinterest bears a resemblance to the conventionally female activities of scrapbooking and collage, it is primarily oriented towards future consumption rather than past memories. Jones (2016) pushes this argument further, contending that Pinterest’s scrapbooking aesthetic is “an alibi” for the labour of yearning and self-surveillance that users engage in. Jones’ reading of Pinterest resonates with features found on BNPL apps. Several of the BNPL apps contained similar features, and three of the interview participants in our study brought up their use of these features, even though this was not covered in the interview guide.

We argue that the similarities between BNPL apps and websites and other social media sites are significant because these platforms each make similar affective appeals to consumers. Specifically, we contend that BNPL services draw on discourses, images and affects that have been central to the creation of digitally intimate spaces on social media sites such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr (Dobson, Robards, and Carah 2018), on which young women interact, and that in so doing they create a “structure of feeling” reminiscent of these online spaces. Specifically, this is a “structure of feeling” based on a sense of relatable fun that facilitates the purchase of consumer items marketed to women (most often clothing, accessories and gifts). The concept of digitally intimate spaces draws from Berlant’s (2008, viii) “intimate publics”, which are comprised of “strangers who consume common texts and things” and encompass the collective dimension of intimacy. The concept is well suited to analyzing mediated forms of social intimacy, and has thus been adopted for the study of intimate publics in digital spaces. We argue that the structure of feeling cultivated on BNPL apps and websites is nurtured through affects of relatability and feminine sameness that are reminiscent to those found on social media sites popular among young women, and which allow young women to experience the consumption of credit via BNPL as fun and pleasurable in a way that contrasts markedly with their experiences of other forms of credit (as expanded on in the following section). Importantly, many of our interviewees described their use of BNPL services in affective terms by, for instance, identifying Afterpay as “my fun thing” (Alana, late 20s) or “just for fun” (Megan, 20), and discussing the enjoyment associated with buying “slurgy boogie baby clothes” best categorized as satisfying “wants rather than needs” (Elsie, late 20s). Additionally, although all of the participants engaged with BNPL services alone – typically while shopping online from their home – and even hid their use of these services from significant others in some cases, they nevertheless identified the use of BNPL as a normal feminine consumption practice. Specifically, many of the participants identified that BNPL use as “just a normal thing” (Megan, 20) among both their peer group and young women in their wider age cohort. The shared affective experience of BNPL services as fun and the imaginings of BNPL as used by a cohort of similar young women support our reading of BNPL users as part of a digitally intimate public mediated through the shared use and experience of BNPL services.

We argue that a sense of intimacy and fun is actively cultivated by BNPL services. As a case in point, the landing page on the website of Laybuy, an Australian BNPL service founded in 2017, presents a rotating series of tableaus in which Claymation figures are depicted in relatable scenarios. The first tableau presents a woman lying on her stomach on a lounge wearing headphones and shopping on her laptop. The scene is domestic – she is clearly in her home, and is wearing an oversized jumper, pyjama pants and mismatched socks while a dog lies nearby. When the image rotates to the next tableau a woman is sitting outdoors in a t-shirt and board-shorts. The domestic appeal of the previous image is carried over via the presence of a cat and a takeaway coffee cup – each of which appeal to a sense of feminine sameness by depicting the trappings of contemporary feminine domesticity in a familiar, yet not idealized way. The following tableaus depict, in turn, a young woman (comfortably dressed) purchasing clothing at the point of sale in a store, and a young man lying on the floor with his legs elevated, admiring his new sneakers in a mirror while trying to take a photo (shoebox discarded beside him). Notably, three out of four tableaus place their protagonist within a domestic space, and two of them present activities that may be referenced as a means of self-deprecating humour (taking creative selfies and online shopping in pyjamas with a pet). The self-deprecating humour latent in these images stems from the fact that they each depict images of activities that may be a source of embarrassment if they were to be shown publicly, but are likely to form the basis of relatable anecdotes shared between friends or even as demonstrations of authenticity online (see Reade 2021). The effect of these images is to create an affective experience of intimate relatability.

While advancing the argument that BNPL services use affects of relatability to nurture a fun and pleasurable structure of feeling that is reminiscent of other digitally intimate spaces found on social media sites we draw from Kanai’s (2019) work, which has identified a similar type of appeal in digitally intimate spaces. Kanai’s (2019) work focuses on young women’s self-representational blogs, and she argues that the intimacy of these digital spaces is fostered through practices which enact fantasies of feminine sameness which encourage attachments between the poster and the viewer by generating affects of relatability. While the blogs that Kanai studied were posted by young women who were representing themselves for an audience of other young women, the images and text used on BNPL websites and apps echo the relatable representations that were displayed on those blogs. Indeed, by depicting the process of shopping and enjoying products in intimate and relatable ways that reference knowing and self-deprecating forms of humour these representations create a structure of feeling that echoes the fun and familiarity of the digitally intimate online spaces that many of the young women in their target demographic occupy. It is in this way, we argue, that BNPL services seek to engage their largest customer base.

While many BNPL apps and websites appealed to a sense of relatability, aspirational images and discourses were also prominent. For instance, Afterpay and Klarna presented highly stylized photographs of conventionally attractive young people dancing, travelling and socializing. However, the representation of this form of femininity in online spaces is also closely related to the notion of relatability, which constitutes the affective pull that draws viewers into a digitally intimate public. While discussing her research context Kanai (2019, 4) states “relatability is a sense of shared promise positioning both blogger and reader, not as perfect, but buoyed by a sense of common desire to remain in a nebulous zone of proximity to it.” Relatability is a means of critiquing feminine standards of success – such as those represented in the aspirational images and discourses presented on BNPL apps and websites – while still remaining attached to them and measuring the self in relation to them. The inability to measure up to these standards becomes a point of commonality and relatability, but the standards are not abandoned as aspirational goals for young women to orient themselves to. Drawing on Holt’s (2004) work on cultural branding, we argue that BNPL services seek to provide a solution or salve for cultural tensions facing young women. The services appear to provide a means of aspiring to material progress and normative ideals of successful femininity while providing space for individuals to fall short of these ideals in an era defined by economic instability, weakening labour markets and welfare state retrenchment. More specifically, they provide a means of contending with a context in which discourses of merit, opportunity and equality have not been matched with structural reorganization around feminist demands for social change (McRobbie 2009).

BNPL services as a way to pay

After identifying the affective appeals that BNPL services make to young women, and arguing that they use affects of relatability to nurture a fun and pleasurable structure of feeing, in this section we discuss why this is significant by linking this claim to BNPL services’ efforts to distance themselves from the idea of credit. The BNPL services we analyzed, in digital and physical spaces, did not advertise themselves as providers of “credit” nor acknowledge any association with “debt”. Rather, every BNPL service website and app presented itself as an easy, accessible and flexible means of payment. Frequent terms included “easy”, “ease”, “flexible”, “hassle free” and “no stress”. Notably, BNPL services appeared to be able to position themselves as a way to pay rather than a source of credit, positioning themselves as services to consume. Indeed, BNPL services are posited not just as providing an alternate way to pay (alternate to credit cards, cash or electronic funds transfer payments), but as a better way to pay: “Don’t just pay later. Pay better” (Afterpay). All BNPL services promoted that the customer can pay in instalments with fee- and interest-free periods (with the terms of this period noted in less visible text), and emphasized the speed and immediacy of approval. In this way, BNPL services presented themselves as a distinct service that was convenient and enjoyable to consume, rather than as a line of credit. The success of this approach is evident in the fact that BNPL services are now commonplace as payment options for online purchases. In other words, BNPL services have become normalized and ubiquitous payment methods in the digital space, typically appearing alongside PayPal and credit/debit options on online shopping platforms.

The impression of BNPL services as a way to pay rather than a source of credit appeared to be successfully conveyed to consumers, as this sentiment was reflected throughout our interviews with BNPL users. For instance, Anna, who was in her late 20s, and lived with her husband and three children aged under six in a single income household described the association that she drew between BNPL services and older forms of lay-by. When asked if her and her partner thought of Afterpay and Zip Pay as a form of credit when they began using it she responded:

No, you don’t, because like I said, you didn’t have to put any of your details in like you normally would when it was credit. Now, I think you have to put your driver’s licence number in, but back then you didn’t have to put anything but your name, your email, address and phone number and your date of birth. So definitely back then, it was kind of like a lay-by at a shopping centre kind of thing, but you got it straight away.

The association that Anna drew between the ease of access and seeming anonymity of BNPL services and the way that they did not “feel” like debt was reflected throughout the interviews. Hayley, who was in her mid-20s and was employed casually in the disability support sector, distinguished BNPL services from banks as a “safer” means of accessing credit that, again, did not “feel” like getting a loan. When asked if she had accessed any forms of credit other than BNPL services she responded:

No. Because I've always thought that kind of credit cards and the way that it's structured is really, really predatory and then I started thinking about Afterpay and Zip Pay were different from that because it wasn't really associated with any bank or loans or finances. I thought that that was a safer way to engage with getting a loan because it doesn't even feel like you're technically having a loan.

When asked a follow-up question about why she would rather use Afterpay than go to a bank to apply for a loan or line of credit Hayley responded:

I would say because there's a few things. The way they advertise. The fact that it's so easily available to get on an app. That you don't have to engage with anyone or talk with anybody. It doesn't seem as serious I guess as a bank would.

Hayley’s statements illustrate the success of BNPL services in distinguishing themselves from the “feel” of banks and other sources of credit by nurturing a “structure of feeling” that contrasted markedly with the seriousness of these institutions. The distinction that our participants drew between banks and “formal” loans and types of credit and BNPL services appeared to be fuelled in part by how these services were represented and the affective appeal that they fostered. We found, via walking ethnography of major shopping precincts, that BNPL services were also common and normalized in these physical spaces. Of the 215 stores visited, 114 had at least one visible sign indicating that a BNPL service was available as a payment option. Of these stores, 46 advertised that more than one BNPL service option was available. The stores that did not advertise the availability of a BNPL service were typically large supermarkets, clothing stores targeted towards older customers or small local retail and service outlets.

The ubiquity of BNPL services in both digital and physical commercial spaces was noted by some of the interview participants as well. For instance, during a focus group discussion three young mothers (aged 19, 20, and 22 respectively) living in a small town in the Hunter region with their partners and receiving income support payments noted:

Lillian:

You see so much, you're scrolling through Facebook and an ad for Afterpay comes up or an advertisement for a shop and they're like oh yeah we have Afterpay.

Raven:

More and more shops are getting Afterpay.

Kelsey:

And you'll go through a shopping centre and there'll be a sticker on the window of almost every shop saying Afterpay and Zip Pay.

However, following on from these young women’s observations, during our walking ethnography we observed that the signposting of BNPL advertisements was notable for its lack of attention-seeking. Notices regarding the availability of BNPL services as payment options were generally integrated into the standard instore information about payment options. Oftentimes, the BNPL service logos were presented in the store’s own brand colours, rather than those of the BNPL service. Small stickers on the front window of the store and notices at the point of sale were the most common forms of BNPL service signage. Stickers promoting the availability of BNPL services were also often placed on changeroom mirrors in clothing stores – a quite literal representation of self-projection and aspiration: “looks great, why not?” (Zip Pay). An exception to the more discrete and integrated signage was noted in a number of sporting goods stores, where signage was prominent via notices on the walls, stickers on floors and at various points throughout the stores. Marketing messages were, in some instances, designed with consideration to the specific type of store, emphasizing the “playful” nature of BNPL services. One sign at the point of sale counter at a children’s clothes store said “Afterpay Yay!!” and another on the window of a bodypiercing store said “Buy now, cry later” (Afterpay).

The integration of BNPL into both digital and physical commercial spaces fits comfortably within existing understandings of the expansion and normalization of consumer credit, understood as a cornerstone of the financialization of everyday life (Federici 2014; Martin 2002). However, in contrast to existing credit products, BNPL products actively avoid being associated with credit. This resonates with Langley et al.’s (2019) finding that many pay day loan customers understand the loans as liquid money, rather than a source of finance. However, we find that BNPL services push this dynamic a step further by positioning the loaned funds not just as money (as opposed to credit), but as their own money. The suggestion is that BNPL customers are essentially borrowing not from a third party company, but from their future selves (for more on the relationship between debt and futurity see Farrugia et al. 2022). During the interviews we found that, for the majority of our participants, BNPL services were conceptualized as a way to spread out payments, rather than as a loan or source of credit. For instance, Christie, aged 30, who worked as conveyancer stated that she did not use Afterpay because she was short of funds to pay for her purchases, but because she felt better (“less guilty”) if she spread payments out over time:

I’ve only ever used it on clothes. And only online. And you know it’s only ever been $200 or so that has been split up over four payments. And the weird thing is that I’ve always had the money there, but I’ve felt like oh I will just do it on Afterpay and that way it will feel like less money coming out, or less of like “you know, I’m not really spending $200 on clothes, I’m just spending $50 a week” do you now what I mean. When I thought about it, I think it’s the breakdown of costs makes me feel less guilty about how much money I’m spending on work clothes or stuff like that.

Similarly, Megan, aged 20, stated:

Afterpay makes it feel more like it's still … it just makes it feel like it's something smaller [than banks] and it's your money.

This example suggests that the impression that BNPL products are not credit has been successfully conveyed to consumers. Importantly, this would likely not be possible without the intimate, pleasurable and fun “structure of feeling” that is nurtured on the apps and websites that mediate consumers’ interactions with these services, and which attract engagement from young women while distinguishing BNPL services from other, more “serious” sources of credit. The representation of BNPL services as a “way to pay” rather than a form of debt represents a further development in the normalization and de-politicization of debt described by Roberts and Soederberg (2014) which seeks to move away from the very idea of debt.

Conclusion

This article provides a sociological reading of BNPL services, and in so doing extends Langley’s (2014a) work on the consumption of credit by considering how the careful representation of a specific credit product can mask its very nature as credit. We find that BNPL services’ apps and websites nurture an intimate, pleasurable and fun structure of feeling that is reminiscent of online spaces that young women occupy by deploying affects of relatability. However, beyond simply enhancing the appeal of these spaces for consumers by providing a product that feels “fun” and yet allows them to attain aspirational consumer items, the structure of feeling nurtured in these digital spaces also aids in masking the status of BNPL products as a form of credit. This is achieved in large part by distinguishing them from better established forms of credit that are viewed as comparatively serious. Drawing on this analysis, we contend that the distancing of BNPL services from other forms of credit it not achieved simply through their efforts to skirt credit regulations (see Johnson, Rodwell, and Hendry 2021). It is facilitated by the affective appeal that they make to consumers. We ultimately suggest that future research consider the intersection of financialization and affective governmentality in order to consider how structures of feeling are cultivated with the aim of shaping consumer behaviour. Empirically, the next steps in this research agenda are consideration of these dimensions of BNPL services from the perspective of product designers, and consideration of how greater regulation of the BNPL industry that is planned in several countries (most notably the UK and Australia) may impact on the success of their representation as simply a way to pay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a pilot program grant from the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle.

Notes on contributors

Julia Cook

Julia Cook is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research interests include the sociology of youth, time and housing, and the intersections of each of these topics and economic sociology. Her most recent research addresses young adults' pathways into home ownership and young adults' navigation of debt and financial assistance. She is a founding member of the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre, a chief investigator on the current phase of the long-running Life Patterns longitudinal research programme (2021-2025) and a 2022-2025 Australian Research Council DECRA fellow.

Kate Davies

Kate Davies is a Senior Lecturer in Human Services at University of Newcastle. Kate is passionate about bringing together research, lived-experience and practice to explore issues of social justice. She works collaboratively in the areas of homelessness, disability, mental health, child protection and peer work. Kate's recent research projects have examined the employment of people with disability in the disability workforce, collaborative autoethnography methods, participatory social housing models, inclusion of families in child protection processes and young people's experiences of debt. Kate is also a community development practitioner who has worked throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

David Farrugia

David Farrugia is Senior Lecturer in Education at Deakin University, and an ARC Future Fellow. His work explores the relationship between youth and the new economy, including labour, employment, credit and debt. His most recent book is titled Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self.

Steven Threadgold

Steven Threadgold is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Newcastle, Australia. His research focuses on youth and class, with particular interests in unequal and alternate work and career trajectories; underground and independent creative scenes; cultural formations of taste; and experiences of debt. His latest book is Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities (2020, Bristol University Press). Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles (2018, Routledge) won the 2020 Raewyn Connell Prize for best first book in Australian sociology. His latest edited collection with Jessica Gerrard is Class in Australia.

Julia Coffey

Julia Coffey is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia and Deputy Director of the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre. Her research focuses on youth, gendered embodiments and feminism. Her most recent books are titled Everyday Embodiment: Rethinking Youth Body Image (2021, Palgrave) and Gender in an Era of Post-truth Populism (co-edited with Penny Jane Burke, Akane Kanai & Ros Gill, 2022, Bloomsbury).

Kate Senior

Kate Senior is a Professor of Anthropology. Her most recent book, Indigenous Youth Futures, explores the lives and aspirations of Indigenous young people in remote communities in northern Australia. Kate uses a range of arts-based methods to work with young people to explore their understandings of sensitive issues such as sexual risk and feelings of indebtedness.

Adriana Haro

Adriana Haro is a recent PhD graduate and researcher at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Barrie Shannon

Barrie Shannon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of South Australia. Their research expertise is in gender, sexuality and education, having recently published a monograph on trans youth and sex education titled Sex(uality) education for trans and gender diverse youth in Australia.

Notes

1 The relationship between affect and discourse is a point of contention for many affect theorists, with some viewing them as inherently separate (Massumi 2002) and others reading them as inseparably entangled (Wetherell 2012). However, we argue that a strict separation between discourse and affect is both methodologically and analytically untenable. We follow Anderson (2014, 6) in viewing affects as having the potential to bind to and become attached to “almost anything”, including discourses. Specifically, we understand affects as emerging from “specific material-discursive arrangements” that are already entangled with and mediated by discourse (Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria 2021, 506).