@countessalmirena wrote:Afterpay or Zip or anything of that sort makes its money by the many who use it and end up paying for it. If Afterpay and similar didn't have a good proportion of its users paying fees and interest, it wouldn't work as a concept, let alone as a business.
Charging people money because they can't pay money (and relying on that as a primary source of income as a business), is less likely to be sustainable, though. I'd say the bulk of their revenue comes from seller fees (which appear to be 30c flagfall, and then 2-6%, depending on the seller's volume - they also don't refund any fees if the buyer gets refunded).
Not that I have any particular insterest in defending them, so I hope that's not what my post appears to be doing 
as I do still find their loan system a bit on the predatory side.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who used a loan shark, or even Cash Converters, for a quick bit of cash to get them out of a tight spot, paid it back quickly and then moved on with their lives....and there are plenty of people who were not able to do that, and so they are my concern and not all the people who are totally fine with paying X amount every week once committed, but not saving that over the same period instead (and by "my concern", I mostly mean as a general, social and economic issue, though I'm not without empathy for individuals).
