Apple Pay Gains Support for Citi Monthly Payment Plans

I bought a small group of family dinner last week and today I got the offer to spread that bill for one dinner over 6 payments. Maybe that's good? But from a high level viewpoint, I'm not so sure. 10 or 20 years ago, I'd toss a joke of needing "90 days same as cash" to buy dinner at THAT place. And now such terms are actually popping up... for ONE meal.

Does it not bug people that the whole credit machine has worked its way down to trying to get people into a monthly payment arrangements on only $75 purchases? I guess next we're making 5 payments to finance $50 purchases and than 3 payments to finance $25 and just keep that going until we're making payments in pocket change to finance $1. How low can that go? 6-7 monthly penny payments to repay a nickel (loan)?

Is it a sign that many are tapped out and maximizing profit in the financing game is increasingly becoming a volume play vs. the big deals for big cuts? Or maybe it's both: harvest big on big deals AND harvest small on big volume of little deals?

Your fathers or theirs would generally only get into payment plan arrangements for relatively large purchases: houses & cars. But in the last 40-50 years, the big payment model has worked its way down to smaller & smaller purchases. Another way to say that is financier entities like banks are working their way into getting a little bite of every transaction... and then attempting to double down their revenue by encouraging relatively micro payments to finance fairly cheap purchases.

I bought a small group of family dinner last week and today I got the offer to spread that bill for one dinner over 6 payments. Maybe that's good? But from a high level viewpoint, I'm not so sure. 10 or 20 years ago, I'd toss a joke of needing "90 days same as cash" to buy dinner at THAT place. And now such terms are actually popping up... for ONE meal.

For the love of… Please, PLEASE, never use these or anything similar (such as Afterpay, etc). If you have to finance your everyday purchases, you need to take a serious look at your financial health.