The PayPal Credit buy now pay later offering is “cynical as fk”, according to Richard Hammond, CEO at customer analytics startup Uncrowd**.

PayPal Credit is pitched as “a credit card without the plastic. And with 0% interest for four months on all purchases of £99 or more, it’s the perfect way to spread the cost of larger online purchases”

In a LinkedIn post, Hammond, responding to a billboard ad promoting the service and featuring a bunch of very happy people paddle boarding for the first time, said: “it’s cynical not just in intent but also in execution "Hey, want to smile again? Get into insidious debt and your friends will come out to play. Don't pay the electric, get an inflatable paddle board because that is what's important in your young life."

He added: “PayPal, you have a duty of care to your customers, not even just in moral terms but in regulatory ones. Financial Conduct Authority, how can this possibly be okay?”

Shopping online. Paying later. Splitting pizza. Do it all in one app with PayPal. And say goodbye to phone screen clutter. https://t.co/eQINyL78er pic.twitter.com/HhdTVI6hLJ
— PayPal (@PayPal) April 26, 2022

Hammond said that he has been a retailer for 36 years and is “acutely aware of the dichotomy between consumption and preservation of precious resources that our industry battles.”

“My resolution of that dichotomy has always been to look to the economic and human good. Consumption taxes and taxes on economic activity generated by the retail sector are what build hospitals.”

“They are what pay for our kids to be educated, roads to be built and for a safety net for us when we fall on hard times (cruel current government notwithstanding). 10% of the UK's entire workforce is in retail and hospitality; that's four million people deriving a living and often a sense of self worth from consumption.”

Hammond continued: “Many retailers also put themselves at the head of the curve in taking positive action on mitigation of the impact of consumption. Stuart Rose when leading Marks and Spencer being a notable example with the groundbreaking Plan A programme that came a long time before most customers were even aware that there might be an issue.”

“So for all that, I've held my head high as a retailer, knowing that we as an industry are a net force for good.”

“Pushing people towards pernicious debt though, as the messaging on this billboard does, that very directly undoes any of the positive effects our industry is able to generate.”

He concluded: “When we went store card crazy in the 1980s and 1990s, we were not a force for good. When we overuse Klarna instalment plans to disguise true cost, we are not a force for good.”

“And when PayPal cynically push a filthy lifestyle lie to sell debt, well then we have gone from the useful provision of liquid capital to becoming merchants of misery.”

PayPal did not respond to our request for comment.

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