A feminist approach to fintech: exploring ‘buy now, pay later’ technologies and consumer fintech

Abstract

ABSTRACT ‘Buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) is a financial technology that is reshaping online consumption by allowing users to split payment for goods over 3–4 interest-free digital installments. While the use and value of BNPL has risen dramatically, it, and other consumer-oriented fintech, has received relatively little critical attention. Demographically, the majority of BNPL users are young and women and its negative impacts are disproportionately felt by lower-income groups, making this a specifically gendered financial technology. In this paper we develop a feminist approach to studying fintech, which we use to present a critical analysis of BNPL drawing on data from the US, UK, and Canada. Through this lens, we explore BNPL’s revenue streams, data collection practices, relative lack of regulation, and how these factors function structurally in the digital payments space, to analyze their impact for consumers and retailers in the context of rising consumer indebtedness and the financialization of consumption. We argue that BNPL is a fintech intervention that attempts to shift consumer practices with distinctly gendered implications for social reproduction, household finance, and everyday relations to debt and money.