Buy what you want, today! Platform ecologies of ‘buy now, pay later’ services in Singapore

Abstract

AbstractThe rising popularity of fintech‐driven solutions has reshaped financial markets and retail consumer behaviour. This paper examines the growing ‘buy‐now‐pay‐later’ (BNPL) phenomenon as a novel, platform‐driven financial innovation to understand how this digitally mediated economic arrangement has produced new financial subjects and subjectivities. Using the idea of ‘platform ecologies’ that combines the relational focus of financial ecologies with the logics of platform finance, this study highlights how the intermediary role of BNPL services has reshaped relational monetary practices through algorithmically driven modes of operating. Analysing Singapore's nascent BNPL landscape through content analysis of BNPL firm websites and critical media coverage of BNPL, this paper shows how automated technologies of risk assessment and debt collection are deployed to govern borrowers and keep them digitally attached to their debts, where creditworthiness is continuously evaluated in response to user transaction and repayment data. The strategic use of affect in framing BNPL services to satisfy immediate materialist consumption masks the fundamental nature of BNPL as debt, while the targeting of young individuals with no credit history through opaque techniques of credit and risk management creates new indebted subjects. The implications of such data‐driven practices in producing greater indebtedness and further shaping financial subjectivities are discussed.