Harvard fellow: CFPB’s ‘buy now, pay later’ regulation isn’t enough—nothing ‘substantively changes’
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declared in May that buy now, pay later customers should have the same federal protections as users of credit cards.
However, Marshall Lux, a fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School who studies BNPL, says the government’s latest guidance is already a few steps behind.
“What substantively changes? Nothing really,” he said.
The new regulation means that the industry — currently dominated by fintech firms like Affirm, Klarna and PayPal — must make refunds for returned products or canceled services, investigate merchant disputes pause payments during those probes and provide bills with fee disclosures.
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