Yes because American public transit is so great and now you have to get up hours earlier and come home later - not great if you have kids or you actually want to spend time with your significant other.

Also what happens when that cheap old car doesn’t start in the morning when you need to get to work or pick your kids up from day care/school or need to be home when they get off the bus?

Where are you going to get the money to fix that old car?

That’s not how BNPL works in its modern form with the third party companies. You pay late fees if you pay late. If you have a 3 month plan, they divide the payment into three equal installments and you pay it off.

The parent poster is confusing BNPL with cobranded cards like Room 2 Go credit cards that have special promotions with “0% for x months”. It’s a regular credit card where the minimum payment won’t guarantee that you pay the original amount off in “x” months, but you only have to pay 2% of the balance. These have always shown up on your credit report.

They are “deferred interest” plans where if you don’t pay the balance off in $x months it will charge you back interest.

Fixed payment schedule and no interest being charged.

Well seeing that you need a car to go to work to have money to invest in the first place…

And before you say “buy an old beater”, then you have to contend with an unreliable car that may cause you to be late to work and get fired. It’s also much easier and cheaper to get a car loan for a newish car than to borrow money to fix a car.

And this has nothing to do with buy now pay later since you aren’t charged interest