Normally Americans without financial liquids or with credit problems chose to take refuge in the program of sections that is called Layaway where the client chose several products that he was paying in comfortable monthly installments from August to December; Once settled they were delivered to them, which made their purchases ready at Christmas.
In addition to offering the option of paying for an item long-term without incurring interest charges, in addition to not affecting your credit score.
And it is just before Christmas that the long-awaited Layaway has begun to disappear in some companies such as Walmart who announced that for the first time in its history it will not offer this benefit this year and will be replaced with a financing option under the principles of “buy now, pay later”, in addition to suggesting to make purchases through Affirm.
Nancy Koehn, a retail historian and professor at Harvard Business School, told PBS that the Layaway became very popular in 1920 because consumers could purchase various purchases through this benefit such as radios, electronics and even automobiles.
Although the Layaway is disappearing, an option has arrived that is moving masses, particularly young people who do not have a loan.
The “buy now, pay later ”is nothing more than a program that allows the consumer to purchase an item immediately and pay for it through convenient installments.
The idea is that the customer can enjoy the item immediately while paying for it.
The programs that are part of the “buy now and pay later” are: Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm, same as have seen a good reception.
According to Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette, since they launched Klarna on their website they have escalated to Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, both online and on stores.
“With Klarna, we continue to see higher spending per visit and higher acquisition of younger new customers, the 45 percent are less than 40 years old. Our goal is to turn all of these new customers into loyal Macy’s customers, who come back for future purchases, ”said the CEO.
With Layaway stores were sure that payments would be made in one way or another, however, with this new modality it remains in doubt that customers pay the entire product , they are informs you that if you do not make your payments on time, your case will be sent to a collection agency.