You can now buy a box of biscuits with 36 monthly installments in China - Sensationalist Headlines

Gone are the days when taking out a loan for anything but a house or car in China was pretty much unheard of. With the rising cost of living, a growing number of tech-savvy Chinese millennials are now jumping onto the buy-now-pay-later bandwagon. Chinese fintech giants — including Alibaba's Ant Financial and JD Finance, as well as smaller players like Lexin Fintech — are cashing in on the trend with some even allowing buyers to pay for a packet of biscuits in 36 instalments over three years. China's credit system expands Irresponsible dog owners and dishonest e-commerce vendors are being punished under dozens of local credit scoring systems being rolled out across China. Lexin, which operates online shopping platform Fenqile — which translates to "instalment happiness" in Chinese — lets consumers buy mobile phones, watches, cosmetics, and even snacks on credit and repay the loan in instalments. For example, a 475-gram box of Oreo biscuits can be bought for about 50 yuan ($10) and paid back in monthly instalments of 2.07 yuan ($0.41) over three years. The long duration of repayments may sound appealing, but this year, Fenqile users were charged with hefty annual interest rates of over 20 per cent in the 2018 September quarter for the privilege — the maximum legal annual interest rate in China is 36 per cent. And while borrowing money for smaller items like mobile phones is widely accepted in the West, the practice of taking out loans — let alone microloans — has only recently taken off in China. Dorrit Chen, Euromonitor International's Consumer Finance analyst in China, told the ABC that Chinese millennials are now widely embracing microloans to purchase big-ticket items like a new car, all the way down to smaller purchases like breakfast. China's millennials embrace loans and paying in instalments as m.. My god is this stupid.

Up towards 36% annual interest? Anyone financially responsible would do best to avoid that.

Paying installments for big purchases is something I find reasonable and nothing out of the ordinary, but paying installments for something as trivial as a box of biscuits? I’m sorry but if anyone is going to pay installments for fucking biscuits, I won’t hesitate to call them a sub-normal retarded halfwit.

My parents always said there are only three things you should ever go into debt for: a car, a house, and an education. All three are investments. Granted, the economy has changed quite a bit, but I feel the sentiment still stands.

I'd argue a car isn't an investment, it pretty much always goes down in value. If they're trying to say a car can help you get a job, so can a cheaper used car.

Buying a two to four year old car is a far better option. Usually nearly just as good as new, but a lot cheaper. They lose the most value in their first few years.

oh hello debt bubble.

Specially if you pay with cash and you buy from a person instead of a store.

The most expensive thing you can ever do in a brand-new car is drive off the dealership lot. Instant fuckin' drop in value right there.

Fucking 7 year contract, Jesus Christ lmao you can pay off medical debt in less time

surprise, it might just be filled with grandma's sewing kits! https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/113069/0edb15bb-56d6-4164-b109-f2d4fb81cdb9/image.png

Royal Dansk biscuits do not exist. They are just sewing kit tins. No one has ever seen a Royal Dansk biscuit, let alone eaten one.

An entire generation of young people now have access to money and financing options but don't have the prior experience of generations before them to warn them not to fuck around with credit because of the Communist times. China is heading for a head-on collision with financial immaturity and their government has no idea what to do about it

While pre-owned cars are nice, you don't have too much knowledge of how the previous owners treated the car, and it doesn't really come with a warranty. I chose to buy a new car as it comes with the manufacturer's warranty. Which is nice as I plan to drive that care into the grave.

Anyone else ever look at old 1920s car and vacuum cleaner ads that advertised a similar payment model to this? I suspect China will soon learn why that was a bad idea.

And I thought russian credit card which allows you to buy in burger king with 0 interest if you pay within 1 month was stupid...

Those damn millenials are at it again! Now they aren't even paying for their stuff in one go, as if they were poor and everything's expensive!