Summary
DoorDash is partnering with Buy Now, Pay Later service Klarna to let customers divide fast food purchases into interest-free installments or defer payments to align with paycheck schedules.
This expands BNPL services beyond their typical use for large purchases like furniture.
The partnership comes amid record BNPL usage ($18 billion during last holiday season) and as Americans face increasing debt levels, with serious delinquencies on auto loans and credit cards at 14-year highs.
Klarna plans to list on the NYSE soon, capitalizing on the BNPL market projected to exceed $160 billion in seven years.
People can’t even afford food without putting it on credit. If that isn’t the most dystopian thing I dunno what is
One that gets me is the federal minimum of $7.25 wage hasn’t been increased since 2009. It’s the inverse of the atomic test clock at Hiroshima that is reset whenever a nuclear weapon is tested or used; the clock it portends doom whenever it’s count of days is low, the federal minimum wage’s punishing condemnation to poverty of tens of millions of citizens exponentially increases in pain each year it doesn’t change while other goods and services have exploded in cost even in the last 5 years let alone since the great recession when it last went up.
In reality the federal minimum wage is often far more than employees receive so things are worse than $7.25 per hour. Many southern/red states lobbied and passed “tip credit” laws that allows them to steal their employees tips if they make more than $7.25 per hour to reduce their earnings to the federal amount. The actual minimum wage that employers may cost a tipped employee after stealing their tips is $2.13 per hour.
The restaurant and lodging association are a huge lobbying arm that will pivot nicely into the Sharecroppers Management Association where once you go into debt with Doordash they’ll help “place” you in a restaurant where you can repay your “burrito debt”.
They can’t afford food or they can’t afford a taxi for their burrito?