Saturday, December 20, 2025

Podcast: Buy presents now, pay later

Welcome to the Saturday edition of Businessweek Daily, featuring the Everybody's Business podcast. Let us know what you think by emailing th
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What happens to a payment deferred? The question is increasingly important for the US economy. "Buy now, pay later" (BNPL) has turned into an important industry. More than 90 million Americans use the service, with such transactions making up about 7% of purchases for post-Thanksgiving Cyber Monday shoppers. 

This week on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek, we talk BNPL with columnist Amanda Mull. She goes over the business model and whether it's a good deal for consumers. BNPL operates much like a credit-card-layaway hybrid: A payment is split up into four chunks, and the customer pays off their laptop/couch/handbag/blender in installments. The customer generally doesn't pay interest. Instead, the BNPL company (Klarna, BuyNow, AfterPay, etc.) charges a fee to the vendor. There are all kinds of questions about whether the BNPL model encourages people to buy things they can't afford.

Following the theme of questionable purchases, Bloomberg News reporter Zeke Faux joins the show to talk about the business of memecoins. These are cryptocurrency's sketchier cousin—currencies launched not under the pretext of being a serious "investment" but rather as a joke or a quick cash grab. Faux took a deep dive into Donald Trump's meme coin, $Trump. In the meme-iverse, Faux says, people weren't quite sure what to make of it.

Listen and subscribe to Everybody's Business on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal.

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