You may soon be able to “buy now, pay later” for your takeout
The payment company Klarna is partnering with the delivery service DoorDash to offer what is essentially short term credit.

You’ll soon be able to pay for your next delivered DoorDash meal in installments. The payment company Klarna is partnering with the delivery service to offer “buy now, pay later” loans for DoorDash purchases over $35.
Those kinds of short-term loans are becoming more common across the economy, but they come with risks.
One of the most popular “buy now, pay later” methods is known as “pay in four.” Basically, when you buy a new pair of pants — or soon the dinner for your next lazy night in— you pay one installment up front, and three more every two weeks, explained the Boston Fed’s Joanna Stavins.
“So it’s a sort of six-week short-term credit, interest-free,” she noted. If you’re late on payments, however, fees can eventually rack up.
Stavins said that buy now, pay later users tend to have less money in the bank. “And they already carry credit card debt, so they are what I call ‘financially fragile.'”
There’s additional risk because unlike getting approved for a credit card,” there’s no requirement for a buy now, pay later to assess whether you have an ability to repay the loan,” said Nadine Chabrier at the Center for Responsible Lending. “That may lead to consumers taking out unaffordable amounts of debt.”
And a delivered DoorDash meal often comes with fees already, noted Lisa Gill at Consumer Reports. So someone who uses “buy now, pay later” for their order is financing “service fees, delivery fees, gratuity fees and any other service charges over a month’s time, and they’re just trying to get a $10, you know, bowl for lunch or burrito for lunch.”
You could always order directly from the restaurant and cut out the middlemen, she added.