| Hey there, it's Esmé. At some point over the past two and a half years of this seemingly never-ending pandemic, it felt as if companies with names like Afterpay, Klarna, and Affirm offering to let me pay in four installments were all of a sudden everywhere. I'd heard of the "buy now, pay later" industry, but what did that even mean? How did the pay-in-four model work? Where did these companies come from, and how did they make money? Was there a catch? As my colleagues Evan Weinberger, Jenny Surane, and I write in the latest Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, the BNPL industry marries the opaque complexity of Wall Street money with Silicon Valley-style technological wizardry. We nail down—for the first time—the origin story of how and when pay-in-four, the industry's flagship product, came to be. And we explain the reasons behind its explosion: the ability to bypass consumer protection regulations and to exploit human psychology and consumer behavior. It's a big-picture, eye-opening examination of the origin, rise, evolution, benefits, and pitfalls of fintech's hottest space. BNPL products have been lauded as a much-needed alternative (and threat) to credit cards and predatory lenders—and criticized as an emotionally manipulative gateway drug to debt for the young, poor, and inexperienced. Some see pay-in-four and other BNPL installment plans as tools of empowerment in the service of a bigger vision: to "reinvent lending" by "revolutionizing" the long-reviled traditional credit scoring system. The industry has zoomed along an open road for a while, making hay and minting billionaires. But losses are up, stocks are down, competition and complaints are mounting, and the likelihood of regulation and a recession is rising. Is the fun about to end? Click here to read the story or here to listen. —Esmé E. Deprez, Bloomberg News senior investigative reporter  Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Aug. 1, 2022. Illustration: Charlotte Pollet | 
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