Buy Now, Pay Later: The Prequel

When Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) first appeared, it looked like installment credit, but as adoption grew, so did our understanding of what it could be. Like Stuart Kauffman’s theory of the adjacent possible, each step of the #BNPL journey unlocks potential of financial behavior, risk, and opportunity. What began as a checkout option has become a catalyst for reimagined consumer credit.

The J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study, published Aug. 14, 2025, highlighted customer satisfaction rates with card issuer post-sale and third-party BNPL. John Cabell, managing director of payments intelligence at J.D. Power, noted that card issuers in the current economy face challenges in delivering the right card options to the right customers.

Bryce Deeney, CEO of equipifi, a BNPL provider for banks and credit unions, believes financial institutions can leverage established relationships to compete with third parties and keep customers engaged and financially healthy.

This article originally appeared Oct. 14, 2025, in Issue 251001 of The Green Sheet: https://www.greensheet.com/emagazine.php?article_id=8006

The Shop at the Corner: In Memory of Adolf Appel (1890-1936)

Standing with others

Where your shop had been,

Imagining rows and rows of fruit preserves and pickled cabbage

You in the middle, greeting customers by name,

Guiding me in English to the steel-cut oats.

“Danke schön,” I say, wanting to go on,

But you are busy with customers

Here at the center of downtown Koblenz

Your name engraved in bronze

Among the cobblestones.

Dale Laszig

April 7, 2025

Last orders

He was on the phone with another movie exec when I entered the apartment, which had been stripped bare except for a bed on wheels and bulletin board. A few borrowed chairs in oddly painted colors completed the scene.

His friend was explaining he’d have no further use for his various awards and gold records. I can make a few calls, he said. See if I can get you fifty dollars.

Fifty dollars? The sum overwhelmed me. I thought of how I’d converted the gold records to art, carefully pasting citations on the back of the frames, so the provenance would last. So the frames would last. So they’d be donated, sold, inherited, auctioned off. Maybe a few would land in museums.

While our energy assumes new forms, the pictures would survive, looking very much as they look in this empty apartment, unaffected by the march of time. Not sure how I feel about this. Perhaps it validates my efforts to preserve, inform, and cherish. I suppose in some way it gives meaning to my existence as a curator. And I imagine somewhere down the line, someone will say, thank you Aunt Dale, for your stewardship.

Writing Life

Writing is anything but passive, an act of birthing each and every time, images flowing unbidden, filling the page like a river of ink and blood flowing from your fingertips fierce stark and earnest in that writer’s chair, flailing like a hooked marlin as these energies pull you back and forth, raw and primordial, this act of writing - brooking no prisoners - come willingly to the gates, accept your destiny, make it real, the act of making quite seriously not a decision, writing chooses you. Kneel or stand, sit or lie down. It is no matter. You are led and to a certain small degree you are leading.

That’s how it works. You pull from everything you’ve got you pull and pull and sometimes magic happens other times you’re just a working stiff.

Apple to Apple

 I doubt I've ever had a side-by-side comparison like this one at the Apple Genius Bar. Two adjacent MacBook Pros, both with 13.3" screens, reflected Apple's iterative progress with design and my evolving workplace, from a single point of interaction to an ambient SaaS-based model. 

The new book's desktop will be spare, uncluttered, colorful. Data chunks will be filed away, some on hard drives, others in the cloud. 

I write about tech all the time but today I lived it, as I migrated from a data-heavy, single-use machine to a newer technology platform.

Addressing the Bot

Don't get angry at the bot that keeps sending you clueless emails. It's all part of a learning curve. As it gets smarter and supposedly learns from us, we can also learn from the bot. As it flexes its muscle and sends us ridiculous recommendations, it waits patiently for us to respond and say, "not in a million years, you idiot!" Because, unlike us, it can take a million years to get it right.

Good to Gross

Why some things should be left unsold…

So we’ve all had experiences with subpar salespeople and most are highly forgettable except those one or two that go so far beyond established boundaries that they leave us in awe. You know the expression (and may have even heard it from me, because it’s one of my favorites) that if you can’t be a good example, at least be a terrible warning? This is one of those terrible warnings that show us where we never ever want to go. Read all about it in The Green Sheet: Bad Selling, Good Lesson

What's next for Next-Level Commerce?

FreedomPay's previous roundtable discussion examined how touchless commerce technologies facilitated safe, secure transactions during a global pandemic. As industry leaders assess the impact of digital technologies on the commerce ecosystem, they recognize these technologies are playing a pivotal role in transforming payments and powering America's economic recovery.

I'm excited to continue our conversation with Alisa Ellis, vice president, innovation and emerging products at Discover Global Network; Marilyn May, head of product management, Payments and POS at IHG Hotel Group; Dan Rodgers, president and founder at QikServe; Bhavin Asher, foundeer at GRUBBRR; Rich Stuppy, vice president & senior customer experience leader at Kount; and John Mansfield, senior vice president, global business development at FreedomPay.

POS to POI

Only a decade ago, upgrading a POS was a momentous decision for a merchant, because it frequently entailed deinstalling a system and replacing it with new technology, training a staff and entering into a new relationship with a third-party service provider. Considering the expense, down time and uncertainties involved, it is not surprising that many merchants delayed these upgrades, even when their systems became obsolete or noncompliant.

Partnerships and managed services are changing this model. Today, it's easier than ever for a merchant to upgrade a system or switch processors. We've mostly done away with paper applications. Customer databases are easy to migrate. Portfolio conversions involving thousands of merchants can be managed remotely with minimal inconvenience.

Service providers are helping merchants create a continuous shopping experience for consumers across multiple channels. And more importantly, they are helping merchants have a seamless processing experience across ever-changing legislative, regulatory and compliance mandates.

In the current payments environment, the uninterrupted processing experience is made possible by partnerships: partnerships between merchants and acquirers; partnerships between acquirers and a range of service providers. These strategic partnerships address the diverse needs of the merchant community.

I look forward to exploring how these partnership models are moving us forward.  

Passing the hot mic

Being on the other side of a microphone can be good medicine for journalists. We need to be reminded of what it feels like to be quoted, especially when our remarks are taken out of context. I always try to channel the people I interview, but in the end, I can only approximate their thoughts, opinions and feelings. Quotes are pure gold but it matters where they are planted; proximate sentences and paragraphs can change their hue and make them appear entirely different. 

Facts are important but, in some ways, they are malleable. The ways in which we juxtapose data can change the inference of a story. Journalists are supposed to be objective but we're also human. Sometimes we cross the line and let our feelings leak into our stories, especially when we're reporting on crisis situations that impact people we care about. 

When we see news items about people who matter to us, it's only natural to want to point out a discrepancy or to tell the reporter that your friend or relative would never say or do such a thing. 

And when we see ourselves reflected back by media, it's like looking in a carnival mirror. It's a distorted picture that represents a snapshot in time, a pale replica of the compassionate, professional people we strive to be.    

Help for the Unattended

Recent encounters with market-leading help desks exposed deep flaws in customer support models and a growing gap between knowledgeable geeks and the rest of us. It's time to ask if our technologies are self-service or self-serving.

The other day, a tech support specialist advised me to take my MacBook Pro to a nearby store where a faulty USB chip could be diagnosed and repaired. When I called Apple Support, I learned there was nothing wrong with my hardware: following a 2-minute reboot and setting change, I was good to go. I gave the technician an all-star rating, adding, "wish I had called you first."

 Another hour I'll never get back involved reboots, unplugging, re-plugging and counting to 30, leaving me worse off than before. The matter was quickly resolved when I called back in and spoke to a different tech.

Here's what I learned:

Master the basics: Self-service is big and getting bigger. User guides, while boring, are our principal ambassadors to the digital world and its fundamental interfaces. Today I can toggle between Apple and Android devices without skipping a beat as nuances between competitive operating systems become increasingly negligible.

Speak geek: Be ready with account number, service ticket number, and identity credentials when you open a chat or begin a call. These are preferred currencies in the Help Desk trade.

Escalate when necessary: Don't overplay the "Let-me-speak-with-your-supervisor" card. Save it for times when you're about to be charged for unnecessary services or when a language barrier impedes communication. The same principle applies to surveys and social media – try to refrain from airing frustration until you've exhausted all other channels, because innocent people, such as struggling entrepreneurs, middle managers and marketing professionals, can get caught in the crossfire of a negative survey or online review.

Starts with us

Finally, payments industry service providers need to have an honest dialogue with merchants in our space and help them appropriately provision their various layers of support. A functionary who is trained to respond with "yes, no or let me place you on a brief hold," is out of place when advanced troubleshooting is needed.

Let's help merchants boost conversion rates and reduce chargebacks, charge-offs and shopping cart abandonment. We can start by creating better user guides and videos that clearly demonstrate how to deploy and support our digital self-service technologies. 

3 Things that Hold Us Back

I'm always on the hunt for new words to replace overworked words. Which brings me to "seamless." I have to admit, it's doing a fair job of describing a payments industry obsession. If your seams are showing, it means somewhere down the line there's a disconnect that's causing friction, another overworked word.      

What causes friction in digital commerce? Here are three big ones:

Hand-offs: As we merge disparate technology platforms, little gaps between technologies expose vulnerabilities and hold us back.

Distrust: Interdepartmental issues between sales and underwriting, or dev-ops and security, prevent companies from being a nimble, unified force.

Vestigial behavior: The ways in which we interact with technology can reveal a lot about our characters. If your digital assistants are becoming boring and predictable, it may be time to challenge them with a new task or application.

I plan to dig deeper into these three topics in 2021, which can't get here fast enough.

Even if we don't see immediate changes in the new year, the simple act of permanently retiring the 2020 jersey will help our industry and country look ahead to new possibilities.   

From the Vault

April 30, 1992

Brown-Forman Enterprises' fiscal year ends in 3 hours. I'm lying across a bed in my beautiful comped room at the Inn at Loretto. The installation was a success. Mom and Dad were just here; we had dinner. I'll be having pasta primavera for breakfast tomorrow. Portions are generous.

Hectic last week in Tucson. Monday night I drove to Phoenix for a company dinner. I met several people for the first time: Chuck's wife Katie, Rick's wife Wei, Al Campbell, our CTO.

I was seated next to Ron, who of course was at the head of the table. I regaled him with stories until he finally asked me when I find time to work.

I brought a contract that needed his approval but discreetly dropped it under my seat until we were having coffee. He okayed it and Bob, who was sitting next to me handed me the Red Robin paperwork. Chuck said, "you made your quota."

Normally it's not that close but April was a cruel month.

Time sensitive matters

Call it what you want: a hot potato, a ticking time bomb. When you get a lead or an assignment with a deadline, the meter is running and time is not just money. It's the difference between an amateur and professional.

We make a big deal in the payments industry about allowing consumers to transact in their own preferred currencies and payment methods. The same rule applies to communication methods. This may sound elementary, but if someone calls in a pricing request, don't send them an email. Call them back. Respond in kind. Email to email. Phone to phone. SMS to SMS. 

If you are a manager and a direct report doesn't get it, take time to explain the job. Don't make it personal. Keep it about the job and let them know the guidelines. Keep it simple. A deadline is a deadline is a deadline. I'm blown away when people don't understand that or maybe they are so stressed out by the idea that an article is due on a specific day and time that they choke. 

You don't choke on the basketball court when the ref calls the final seconds of the game, so why be overwhelmed when your editor does the same thing? 

Years ago, I met a former Green Sheet editor at a tradeshow when I was a contributing writer. I was turning in stories every month to build brand value and starting to like it. I'll never forget what he told me. He said, "You're a great writer but you have a month to develop and tweak your articles. We don't have that luxury at the news desk." 

In journalism and in payments, it's all about speed. I love my deadlines. Besides holding me accountable for delivering accurate and timely assignments, they are the fossil fuel I run on to stay agile, grounded and on the hunt for great stories.