Remember PPI and Payday Loans? Well, here’s the latest financial scandal waiting in the wings to happen. The option to Buy Now, Pay Later pops up pretty much everywhere you shop online. Sounds great, interest-free, pay over months or even years. A no-brainer? Yes, if you have the cash to make your payments on time. But at the moment these deals ‘fall through the regulatory cracks’, so they generally only carry out minimal credit checks and don’t have to post big warnings about the small print. Which generally says that if you miss a payment (as nearly 50% eventually do), interest of 17% or more can be piled on and it goes on your credit record. Free lunches and all that.
““Sir Howard Davies should be ashamed” – brokers react to NatWest chair’s property ladder comments”
‘Just when bankers’ reputations have started to recover’ might be something of an exaggeration. The image of fat cats and their traders earning big bonuses while crashing the economy still endures and has been given further life and legs by the NatWest chairman’s ultimate out-of-touch-with-the-real-world comments.
