Payday loan places don't know what you're using the cash for. They just give you a cash advance that you can spend on groceries, rent, drugs, or whatever else you want.
BNPL platforms know what you're spending on, and whether it's a one-time expense that you're spreading out, or a rent/utility payment that's going to come due next month as well.
If you have to take a loan to buy food or medicine, you are already at the bottom. Because you need to repay the loan with an interest next month, and you will have even less money left.
Sure. But two things can be pure exploitation and not be the same thing, with the same incentives and same implications.
Cancer and heart disease are both pure health problems, but insisting on handling them similarly would be a mistake. Not that payday loans and BNPL are that far removed, maybe more like liver failure and kidney failure.
There’s something in that about the nature of predators - you don’t actually get mad at the wolf for eating the chicken, it’s what the wolf does, just like eating the worm is what the chicken does and eating your garden fruit is what the deer do. You don’t get mad at the wolf, you either build a fence or you kill the wolf.
